Huntress of Konoha
by BetweenTheSeaAndStars
Summary: Uzumaki Himitsu has a younger brother Naruto she would do anything for. Secrets that everyone overlooks, and a way of changing everything by following her nature. The youngest Hunter nin yet lives in shadows, stirs the leaves. A reincarnation story involving someone of another world. One who has no concept of written language or the story she is now living; and altering entirely.
1. Chapter 1

AN1: My sister is insisting that I should post this here. As it is still going and the full document is currently over 68 pages and 34k words I'm going to put up the first part and see if there is any interest.

I am crossing over with a very old original story idea of mine's character because it just wouldn't leave my mind. Some of this will be deliberately unclear but essentially Himitsu does not come from our world but another altogether more of a classical medieval fantasy with no idea of common writing but usually oral traditions so there's no knowledge of Naruto at all. This just gave me fun thoughts. It is almost entirely her story however and large sections are glossed over for that. It's probably the only reason why at 34k words I'm already at Pain's attack...

()()()()()()()

She's a very aware baby.

The very fact that she knows she is a baby is sadly not the strangest thing at this point in her existence. Luckily the bemusement a small infant has with their hands and feet and staring at everything is normal.

The words are strange. The tones, the lilting. The air and everything around is _different._

Her memories are strong and burn and it is easy to cry and she does so often, so startled the first time she actually has _tears when she's never had them before_ that she screams and that just sets off the system. Unfortunately for her new parents she has a great deal to cry over. She has trouble sleeping in the night which is not something she can apologize for. For all her new body tires easily and seems predisposed to do just that, her mind remembers. Night is the time to move unseen, to be active. The night blends and she thrives where she cannot be caught and caged.

This is not possible now where even her head is too heavy to lift and her eyes yet unfocused. She remembers seeing little ones who had that clouded eye look and she assumes it will be a while before she truly sees. All her senses are so very dulled indeed that it is just one more thing that startles her into crying.

The vibrant red hair..the golden yellow though. Those she reaches for because those are familiar. She remembers those. Even if they cannot be the same people it does not matter. So far it is the one thing that is familiar and so she clings to it.

Because of how she was raised, her father's people avoided the permanent settlements when her mothers did not, are why she is-was- so _different_ even amongst her own kind. This means she is very used to just retreating into a nothingness sort of awareness. It is a primal instinct, and she handles it well. All things are noted, as much as her pathetic senses _can_ but left to be examined later.

Perhaps if she had not been born and raised among those who preferred the wilds to the towns and tiny villages. To live beneath a tent or the open stars, a canopy of leaves with insects and dirt sharing her bed? It may have been harder to allow names and memories to mostly slip into the back. Whom she was is gone, and she lets the memories stay hazy unless something startles a comparison to the forefront.

Within a year she is managing simple words in the new tongue which reminds her of the twitter of birds compared to the languages she knew before all of this. Indeed her vision cleared and she thinks nothing of the fact that she gets a few surprised looks from those who are clearly her parents and their few visitors- all of whom have little children or one quiet silver male that smells even to her senses of dog and the memory startles her into glaring because she can't lash out and screams whenever he tries to hold her- Because the memory of one like that is too strong and too fresh and the loss too sharp. It doesn't help that so often the young male smells of blood that's not fully been cleaned out of fingernails and clothing. When the last she saw of the silver haired friend of hers that reeked of canine it was when they had a death rattle and blood seeping from their form. One more fallen to protect the others and the scents will always be engraved in her memories the deepest a seeping wound she does her best to cover since she cannot flush it clean.

So no, she doesn't let him near.

There's a woman who comes with eyes that glow red and swirl and the first time she sees it she _reaches_ for the bearer of those eyes and her reaction must be unusual because there's a strange hush among the three adults and the small child she brought with her. But she doesn't care because there are glowing eyes so close to the reflective sort she knew and though they are red and not green or yellow or violet and the pupils are wrong all wrong it makes her reach out and smile.

The woman visits more often.

Though she's taken to knowing the words for parents and certain foods and..necessities..all quite advanced for a tiny human girl it seems the toddler who visits and the silver haired boy she cannot like are also very advanced and she decides to ignore it..

It is a long time until she learns her name.

"Himitsu."

She scowls. It's too..consonant. There's no beautiful rolling r's and rumbling hues to it and for whatever it mean she does not care. It bothers her.

It's a reminder of one more thing she gave up and it stings in a way that she is selfish enough to admit is a pain like poking at a scab or a toothache. She cannot seem to stop turning memories over in comparison.

So she dislikes her name and scowls whenever she hears it. That's just for herself though because she knows what the consequences would be otherwise since it's very unlikely there's anyone else in her situation; certainly not from whence she came. Besides she has no right to her old name as in this last act that brought her here she was willing to burn all she was to save her sister. Took her fate and punishment upon herself. Because that's what older siblings do.

Sacrifice is only effective when it is immense. Fair is not a concept the wilds know.

()()()()()

Just as she adjusts to her life it changes.

Her parents are gone, she had known her mother was carrying young but had been a mix of panicked and overjoyed because she had always been an older sister before and learning she was going to have a brother was a new concept. Two sisters but never before a brother. One less thing to compare.

It's odd though how when her parents vanish there are adults that come and go and hushed whispers and panic and all that Himitsu cares about is sitting up, staring at the tiny blonde haired boy with stripes on his cheeks and she approves of that because they look like whiskers. She's letting him hold her finger and doesn't really worry that he's wailing.

She had done plenty of that too.

()()()()()()

The only thing that she is not placid about is the stubborn barely year old saying 'No' when they try to separate the children. Though she cannot remember children being so advanced that they behave three times their age at least, and the motor skills bear this out, no one ever seems to react. It appears to be a strange condition to this place she has landed in.

There are worse things. She remembers them vividly.

()()()()()

The orphanage is not exactly pleasant but it certainly isn't terrible even if the idea of not just being taken in by another family is such a bizarre one. There are plenty who visit and come and go, for all her nose is still pathetic she can still taste the air currents charged with energy and scents and since the masked ones seem to do no harm Himitsu ignores them. As is her way if she can do nothing about a situation.

It's something her father taught her. A pity her younger siblings never learned. They migrated to the worlds of dirt paths and homes built from wood where the only language was spoken far too soon and never managed to adapt back. Not fully. It's something that Himitsu is determined to bank inside her, her wild nature, so she doesn't lose it. It's what helped them last so long in the later years..that at leas one of them remembered.

When she is a few years older the old man whom visit's so often with the pointless hat is instructing her brother on his name. As well as her own. There is no family name which she does not blink at because while it seems many here have them, in her previous life Himitsu did not. Just a name she had earned that followed her real one. She hadn't really liked it either but others chose your moniker so that is one of the few things she doesn't mind leaving behind.

And the one that was secret and held against her heart to never be shared with any but her sisters as she held their names once their parents were gone so that someone would _remember_. A tiny spark of hope whispers that they may still intone it when alone and that could be why she hasn't totally been lost inside this new form.

She's tempted to utter it some days so she can feel her real name vibrate in the air but there could be consequences and she is not ready for them as small as she is.

They are Himitsu and Naruto and that is all. There's a hesitance to the man she reads in his body language, so subtle and slight but before all this Himitsu was a _huntress_ and she hunted _man and things with no names._ She can read him easily even with her dulled senses. Not that she blames him, why explain more to children who can do nothing with the information?

()()()()()

Her brother is considered an idiot.

It's not the first time she had a sibling who was book stupid and world smart but Naruto takes this a bit further. More so than her littlest sister ever had who had never grown out of her curiosity but only to be wary and knew from the start that the world liked to eat you whole. Naruto thinks tears solve nothing and hugs solve the world and she sometimes wants to hit the kindly teenage girl that had told the children on a scheduled visit from one of the local schools that 'kindness and love heals everything.'

It doesn't. Indeed Himitsu thinks it burns deeper than any fire she's known but keeps her mouth shut because it's made her suffering 'why me' brother turn into a playful bit of mischief and that she knows how to deal with.

"Can't you reign your otouto in, Himitsu-chan?" one of the matron's asked despairingly one day as her brother is running stark naked with the other toddlers straight into a mud pit.

Himitsu quirks a smile. "I did. I told him if he got his clothing dirty he had to wash it."

"well at least there's that.."

()()()()

Himitsu doesn't know why she never bothered to find out, she's not used to the idea of looking in mirrors and finds the concept of them odd still as she's too young to wear braids or beads and hasn't the skill yet to make the adornments herself because there's no where to practice around here.

So the first time her hair is actually long enough that a matron hasn't wrangled her to cut her hair so they don't have to spend much time on it and it slips into her eyes she pauses.

And her heart clenches.

Because it's red. Smoldering like fire that has been banked instead of blazing, it's rich and the striations that are in there naturally are golden tone the effect down. It isn't the red that makes her pause because her mother this time had red hair that was aflame practically and many shades brighter.

It's the gold. Logically she knows the few strands that blend in and no one else would notice are from her father.

But she had it before. The deep dull golden orange.

It's the first time her heart trembles and she feels maybe she hasn't completely lost herself to Himitsu.

()()()()()

The idea behind the academy and shinobi altogether is..odd. They're sitting with the man of the funny hat whom tells them to call him grandpa again, Naruto bouncing around the room because it's what he does and he adores how much his sister enjoys observing him be so free. Himitsu is relaxed, watchful.

While Naruto is whooping because both of them will be starting much earlier than they should-as soon as Naruto is five he may start too- Himitsu knows a lot of that is because Naruto is a handful and the matron's don't like him. For some reason. Himitsu thinks he's far more open about his reactions than most and she likes that. Encourages it even though apparently it's 'rude and not at all appropriate.' Who cares? Life is not something to tie down into so many bindings you cannot move.

"Tell me about shinobi." Her request is soft, as if she expects him to hear her. She always speaks like that however, just barely audible because of memories that are _shifted to the side but not forgotten_ and speaking any louder hurt ears and gave you away. They all got so much quieter in the end.

He regales them with stories. That is all they are though, fables. Tales for a campfire to amuse children. Himitsu tilts her head and though generally she lets things go in the four years she's been an older sister she has witnessed enough children being what these people call prodigies that she is comfortable shedding a bit of the dust that has clung to her shoulders. Mentally she stretches and outwardly moves not a muscle.

"And later on?"

The question is ignored by Naruto who is looking for one of his buddies in the orphanage to play ninja with now. While in the streets they are sometimes treated to cold disdain if Naruto is beside her; here in the orphanage the children have little in the way of choices to make and it is actually disapproval from the matron's that dub Naruto as 'cool' to the scamps with no respect for authority.

It's a pity that shortly after they are adopted they never come back to play but that is life.

The funny hat man though blinks as though surprised at her inquiry. "What do you mean, Himitsu-chan?"

"When the escorts and the trade is done? You spoke in fables of hiding in shadows and protecting Konoha but I have read tales, jijii. You are not speaking of samurai and you do not bring up honor..so what happens later?"

The kind dark eyes are suddenly razor sharp and yet he has _nothing_ on even her little sister when upset and so Himitsu waits. Waiting is part of being a predator and she was always a very good one, it is still in her nature.

"I see.." He doesn't but she shouldn't be able to read him so well so she does not react. "Well Himitsu-chan some things must be done that we do not always agree with.."

He visits a few more times, and after passing over sweets and toys to Naruto sits and has quiet talks with Himitsu. If her eyes are so alert it sometimes worries Hiruzen he is reminded whose child she is and that besides her awareness not once has she portrayed anything else.

He cannot help Naruto with his burden, but there is a stillness to Himitsu that comes from her father when he was serious and she only gets thoughtful when he explains the idea of being in the shadows and unknown missions. Of things that can never be spoken of so that others -like her brother- need never know.

"Is there still freedom for those shinobi?"

Hiruzen does not pause for though those shinobi are tightly bound and always shall be to some point it is a set of shackles they carry the key to and choose not to utilize. It is rarely the job and the freedom that irks the nin he speaks of, only that they are then a step apart even from their own shinobi forces. He has no idea that the older eyes of Himitsu read what he does not say as he agrees they do have freedom unless it is because of an action that he must order or else it may cause a loss far greater than the freedom of one.

Her eyes, such a vibrant blue like her brothers but verging on the green blend from her mother flick to where there's barely visible out the window a blonde boy cheering as he waves a stick proclaiming himself the greatest ninja ever- believe it! The contrast between siblings is almost none if you know who their parents were. They just took after them in different ways.

"I prefer the quieter way, jijii."

Hiruzen hesitates but nods. If she has promise then Hiruzen will bury his heart and ensure that the only daughter any of his students have given him to look after will have the road she wants. After all, Himitsu is not the holder of the Kyuubi.

()()()()()

Himitsu leaves for the academy the next day and Naruto is not truly jealous, instead he's insisting she do her best so he can break her record easily. Himitsu is just smiling at him, her calm languid way as he babbles and bounces about. He's such a kitten. She knows from experience this will fade in years and then only brief moments will return and so she never tells him to pipe down.

"I'll be back." She smooths his hair back a few times, before swiping her thumb from jaw up and over his cheek back to his ear. Naruto has grown up with this and so he just laughs and moves into the caress. She is not one for hugs, though she accepts them. Or kisses, though she never wipes it away when he slobbers on her. Leaning into each other and strange little signs of affection are Himitsu's way and because it is different Naruto is smug about it. She isn't the sort to embarrass him, but he keeps trying to do so to her.

She doesn't even mind his pranks as long as they never interrupt her sleep, food, or when she is focusing. If he does he's going to be sat on and she is a little bigger than he is. That he laughs at her form of retaliation is only a benefit.

Himitsu is neither impressed or afraid of the academy. It simply is. The welcoming ceremony because of _course_ hat man went and told her she could join before it starts, is tedious and clearly just to awe the many children.

When they begin the work though she is confused over and over. Why do you need to do these things with numbers? Who cares about the minute details of the land that you will never get to because those features are no longer there? It irritates her but she copes with it.

The physical side she enjoys. She's never learned this way of fighting and so her focus is sharp and she has to remind her muscles to learn because later she can see if her body remembers any of the old maneuvers but not now. Still it is a bit too choppy and stand your ground for her liking but she can thrive well enough.

The concept of jutsu though?

The very idea seems so entirely far fetched and it reminds her of some things she does _not want to think on_ but it is a part of life and so she is grateful that for now at least it is only theory.

()()()()()

"Nee-chan was it awesome did you learn anything neat are you gonna be amazing now?" It's all in one breath and Himitsu reaches out to rub his cheek with a soft smile because Naruto is _home_ and her shoulders ease.

"Ah. It's a lot of reading and tests and stuff that doesn't seem useful..but they are starting us out on taijutsu stances. We can't actually do anything but punch block and kick the air though.."

"Teach meeeeeeeeee!"

"Later." Himitsu is setting her things on the bed and Naruto just waits because his sister doesn't have the body language yet she gets when she's done with a conversation. He knows her body language because it's so _different_ compared to everyone else around them. Himitsu's movements are small and if you don't watch you miss them.

"When I know them perfectly I'll help you. If I did so now I may pass on any mistakes I am making." She finally says when facing him and Naruto beams. Because as much as Naruto knows he is amazing and will be even better, it's just something he _knows._ Even so, the fact that his sister easily admits to her flaws somehow puts her above them as if it's just part of life and passing by. It helps warm him when she was gone and he went out to explore only to be glared at. Himitsu thinks he is wonderful and shows it in all these small ways and so Naruto doesn't doubt himself.

"Okay." He doesn't ask her to promise because Himitsu doesn't ever say _anything_ she does not mean.

()()()()()()

The next time Hiruzen visit's he's greeted by Naruto demanding to know why he didn't tell them the academy was a -gasp- school!

It makes the Hokage laugh as few other things do and he just shakes his head because in this both the Uzumaki's are grimacing.

It's nice to see them being children and helps Hiruzen feel he did the right thing placing them in the orphanage instead of where a council member could grasp onto them.

"You don't like the academy then, Himitsu-chan?" He finally chuckles. Her eyes meet his and she sighs.

"It seems a lot of information useless in a fight."

"Ah." Hiruzen wags a finger, gently reprimanding but understanding now. "Yet so much of a shinobi's life is outside of the battle. There are words to be wielded as weapons and allies to make, friends to care for. There are many things that make a good shinobi not just how they fight."

The rug is clearly been pulled out from under Naruto who sulks and Himitsu is glancing away in thought.

Her next words though make Hiruzen choke on his pipe.

"I do not see the point to them standing around near the orphanage at night."

"Huh?" Naruto asks and yet Himitsu is looking out the window.

"Care to ...explain what you mean, Himitsu-chan?" he prompts softly. The girl glances back at him and then away. She's clearly debating if she wants to share it but that she is at all makes Hiruzen relieved. Because she trusts him enough to bring this up. She's wary enough to feel she should say something. These are all good signs though the part of Hiruzen he left back in the wars is the one re-evaluating the girl.

"One of them uses a very strong soap. It's a taste more than a scent and we like to leave the window open."

They never knew about Minato's family as he was orphaned so young, and Kushina may have had many changes being the Kyuubi vessel. For all he knows a few odd senses passed down to her child who had been a premature quick birth that gave little trouble as if Kyuubi himself was shoving her out of his space before trying to get free. A better sense of smell or awareness is tolerable.

"I see. Well, sometimes. I do come here after all."

"What's that got to do with anything!?" Naruto asks and Himitsu says nothing though it was covered who the Hokage was that first lesson in the academy. He is glad she gives him the chance. So Hiruzen explains his office and role, that because of this many nin are guarding and looking out for him so he can do the same for the village. It lights a fire in Naruto's eyes that is bitter sweet to the old man for his successor carried that blaze. That will of fire.

In contrast the relaxed pose of Himitsu shows none of it. Her loyalty is to Naruto entirely.

Hiruzen cannot fault her that.

"You managed to keep that you were aware secret all this time, impressive Himitsu-chan." And any suspicions that he may have had are not there because this infant is one he held and watched her parents coo over, embarrassed as they were that Kushina had gotten pregnant early. The Kyuubi chakra messing with the birth control so many kunoichi used..Keeping her a secret had been hard but so worth while in the end. It kept her safe.

"I'm not trying to hide that I knew they were there, Hokage-sama. No one asked." She says softly and glances up. Because of what he thinks he knows no one questions if she _has_ secrets. At that moment if he had Himitsu may have told him something. But he does not and she is satisfied in tucking that part away and never offering again. If he wants to take that scrap of information as payment for what he has done for her and Naruto than she shall not inform him of the feast he just bypassed. The door to that conversation closes and no one ever knows.

()()()()()()()()

It's no surprise that she advances swiftly through the academy. The only thing really holding her back is that the idea of the language and it's writing and math is so foreign to her that she struggles with it. Her people had a language but very little was written. Indeed most the memories she has of things in writing are _very bad do not go to those memories_ and she is all the more on edge because these words are lines and shapes and the way they fit changes the meanings.

 **Like runes**.

She spends the break in the bathroom being sick.

()()()()()()()()

Taijutsu though, she picks up and then once she is certain she has it down allows her natural urges to take over. She is fluid, ever moving. Her strikes are fast and precise. Open palms and sometimes curled fingers tucked against themselves not quite in a fist so they do less harm and innately always having to adjust so they do not go to the most lethal areas.

She cannot help her urge to go for the soft stomach..the jugular..so she does not try. Those even the other students can see coming and move away from. She just keeps her hand flat instead of curled because while she has no sign if she is still more who she was than Himitsu beyond that her hair has gold _which can be explained away_ and her eyes tinted green _again could be family here_ she cannot risk it.

She knows all too well that once that most primal instinct gets let loosed there is no holding it back. Not really. Never again.

Not when she's fought back the blood lust before as all her people had at some point. Some like her baby sister, failed. Others like her middle sister avoided anything that could make them lose control. The middle way is the only one that has ever worked for her but if she allows the academy to a be a place she lets the control be lessened it will be a bloodbath for certain.

One of the teachers calls her after school.

They've noticed she's holding back. It's only been most of a year. Himitsu is not impressed it took them so long.

Himitsu does not hesitate to explain that she is not certain she will not kill her opponent otherwise because they are just too slow and not good enough to risk yet. Though there's a wary look she does mean it and so he offers to let her spar with an older class mate.

"I know my strikes..sensei.." There's something in her tone. Perhaps because Itachi had breezed through here not two years ago he takes her seriously. He knows she's a nobody orphan even if he's remembering her features it's been to long to recall why they seem familiar and tilts his head.

"I'll spar with you then and get someone else to watch. You don't have to hold back."

She doesn't really hesitate to nod because there never was a choice given in that offer.

()()()()()()

They take her outside, and though there's playful joking Itachi's shadow looms large over them for it does not matter that her book work is sub par, barely a failing average despite that she tries. Has been trying all year. She still rolls her eyes at jutsu but pays attention with that lazy attitude that has more than one teacher joking she's a nara.

The academy is made to even out the nin, give them all a chance. There are some students they have seen pass through unlike rocks who can be altered by the gentle erosion of water over time. Not when they're instead being bamboo that amass and change the flow of the water.

Even as the sensei steps back he watches Himitsu take a breath and as her fingers come up like his to signal the beginning of the spar, she loosens her muscles.

Deep inside the memories yawn and stretch and she shifts.

Himitsu has been holding back far more than they could ever know.

The sudden onslaught is almost terrifying. For the teachers. Because Himitsu was not only holding back but clearly close to being unable to. Her blows are no longer slaps and curled throws slightly altering the academy taijutsu. This is something all her own. She _moves_ at a speed genin shouldn't be able to as they don't know their bodies well enough yet and her strikes have the maximum force her tiny body can direct behind it, utilized perfectly.

Stomach, throat, solar plexus, eyes, even groin. She goes for them all with her hands and her kicks with her back legs when she's grasped by the shoulder's by her sensei to throw her back are not the wildly swinging type but she pulls knees up and towards her before lashing out with her heels slamming into stomach and hips hard.

The moment he lets go to stagger back she's out of range and seems to always just be sliding out of his periphery.

She doesn't win.

But it is an extremely close call.

()()()()()()

The problem is not when they let her go for the afternoon and go back inside to discuss what to do..with her sensei limping and injured.

Himitsu goes for the distant trees.

No, the problem is she fought but there was no reward. The huntress in her has stirred and so she sighs and goes to find some form of small game that won't cause surprise if she catches and cleans it to bring back to the orphanage.

Hunting for family will help. Because in this she can be greater than her instincts. Because supplying the orphanage is feeding her brother and all instincts that her people had were heavily molded to put family first beyond anything.

She knows she is being followed but does not care. She catches and cleans a few rabbits easily, but in light of her observer uses the kunai instead of snapping their necks. She doesn't hesitate when she is watched and leaves the pelt and all the parts that the orphanage squirms at -she's not the only kid who has brought home food to stretch the budget before though she's one of the only younger ones. Fishing is way more common and only in upper years- the scavengers will handle those. They always do.

She is nearly out of the grounds when her watcher lands. White mask hiding his features and cloak obscuring his form but there's a scent to him that is _male_ but young and she blinks lazily.

"Someone would like to meet you."

"Another time." She slips by them without a word and they let her go.

()()()()()()()

The offers come more and more often, she is no longer taking part in taijutsu lessons at the school with the others but given more help with her throwing and chakra. She is jumped to the graduating classes for those but still in her regular ones for the rest. Instead her teachers once a week spar with her in taijutsu and she adapts to their methods fast. Every time she fights someone she becomes that much better at taking that particular person down.

And then word that either once they turn eleven or graduate they can get a small subsidized apartment is mentioned by the Hokage.

Himitsu fights to not lick her lips as she scents the prey that is being bait.

The thing is, they are trying to bait a ground squirrel or a rabbit. At very _best_ a puppy dog.

Himitsu may not be as she was but the memories are there and she's a much bigger predator. She can snap up the bait and never risk the box trap because it's set up all wrong for her and you can't catch her in something meant for one so much smaller especially when there are no interesting dangers within to tempt her to outsmart. She'll just step back out. The real truth is...she'll ignore the bait and go for the trapper. She was a hunter of men once. Men who deserved it, but still..

"Both or either?"

The Hokage smiles. He thinks he just flushed out the game in the bush.

Himitsu doesn't correct him. It's always been her way to sneak up behind.

"Either."

Her mind hears the snapping of a spine and the caving of a skull with the rush of blood and the prey just became the one who set the trap..but she shows no sign of it. Her eyes flicker to Naruto but she just nods.

()()()()()

"How did you pass early?"

Itachi will never admit to being startled as he whirls around but he's just passed Chunin recently when most still have a year or two before they graduate and he's still adjusting to people sneaking up on him as he's always been better. Now that he has jounin and high class Chunin teammates that's more common.

His eyes land on the girl before him with hair that seems duller than he remembers as though the gold is a bit stronger and her eyes as serious as they were in the infant's face. The one who reached for his mother when her sharingan is on. She'll be happy to hear the little girl she used to take him to see is clearly doing well.

"Pardon?" She's six. Maybe almost seven..he thinks he's four years older but it could be as close as three because of birthdays not all being on the first of the year.

"The academy."

Itachi is a genius. He hears an inflection in her tone and it is not an idle 'how are you so good' but a 'how did you pass'. It's a genuine query..the first one not tainted by anger or jealousy.

"It's not really that hard of a test assessment. It comes down to the three jutsu's and taijutsu and being able to read and write enough to remember and follow orders."

"That's all..." She pauses and trails off before she gives him an amused smile. "Tell your mother hello."

"You remember us?" And he's surprised because he was small but she was so tiny and for just a moment the pressure to be even better at his age when most are still worrying about being home on time not how to get blood out of his clothing that's all pushed aside.

"I remember her eyes." She answers and there's a softness to her voice. He lets his own sharingan activate and her eyes light up just as he remembers.

There is no greed, no fear.

"You have them too?" She's just delighted.

So for some reason Itachi explains the sharingan and he's actually smiling when she shrugs off the wonders of his bloodline and mentions her favorite part is that it glows in the dark.

When he goes home, after poking Sasuke in the forehead a few times to see him sulk he mentions it to his mother and is warmed that she looks so stunned and touched to be remembered by 'little Himi-chan'

They meet up a few times more where he shares information no one gave him about the structure of ninja and pointless other information. He's just Itachi to her and it feels good to set aside all his titles and achievements.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: Still no idea what genres I should have this filed under..family is big, friendship is big, fantasy kind of works. Adventure? Meh.

()()()()()()

Himitsu puts her plan into motion the next time she speaks to the Hokage. Once Naruto is done telling how awesome he is and rushes off to brag about his new toy -because he is still a year off of the academy as they decided Naruto needed to wait until he was six like the other kids and how odd is it to think she's been going for a few years now?

"I heard one can apprentice."

"From?" Hiruzen is not surprised she learned about that loophole. She's almost eight not the youngest graduate they've had but considering how much trouble she had with reading and writing certainly vastly outstripping where she should be.

"A friend."

Hiruzen smiles because naturally he has her tailed and will until she graduates. He does not begrudge her secrecy of meeting with Itachi because they speak of normal things most the time as if they were just regular friends and not ninja legacy's. Her possessive protective nature is well documented. Indeed it was from the new matron who actively takes pleasure in picking on Naruto and yet is a cousin to a high ranking council member and cannot be dismissed..that is why he mentioned the graduating apartment services when he did.

Himitsu was helping Naruto on how to prank the matron. Like he really needed someone giving the ingenious boy sneak tips on being silent and unseen!

"It is not easy."

"I believe you have stated nothing worth doing is. Which is wrong by the way, napping in sunshine is very easy and highly worthwhile."

Hiruzen chuckles at the almost Nara statement but nods. "I'll look into things."

He doesn't need to and she can tell but she lets him keep to his words. She's been turning down the invites that are still coming because the messengers raise her hackles and if she knows anything it is that things that _scent_ the way the runes did are to be avoided. There's no way to prove her suspicions though and Himitsu is rather hoping that it's just in her head.

Because otherwise the connection is still there and they ruined her life once already.

()()()()()()

It turns out there is a jounin who is not interested in taking a team, recently injured, and Inuzuka who steps forward.

The meeting goes surprisingly...every which way. The moment Himitsu steps into the Hokage's office she turns, mouth slightly open and nostrils flared and pinpoints the jounin who was hiding there behind a genjutsu and _sneers._

"Canine."

The Inuzuka barks a laugh even as his dog is wary and he smirks, all feral and wild. "Well got a bit of something to you..I heard your nose was pretty good.."

"Oh I assure you..my bite is _much worse."_ Himitsu's tone is calm but there's a subtle bit of killing intent that is unexpected.

Hiruzen feels this was a terrible idea.

He's both right and wrong. Because where Ongaku-sensei would drive anyone else crazy (the reports complaining of his methods are exceptionally long and detailed; he has gotten along with kakashi on casual missions which says it all really) he's also insanely good and he goes by instincts and believes in removing limits. It's the perfect excuse to explain a lot of things later on and so she just goes along with it.

Of course they fight like cat and dogs but she knows there is nothing in her scent. She's frustratingly human.

He takes her on a short trial training mission the moment she's pre-graduated on paper at least tentatively because she has to survive him and luckily Naruto is too excited she graduated early and they have somewhere else to live -and Itachi's promised to swing by and make certain he has food and the utilities don't get shut off for the few weeks- to care that she'll be gone. He's always been the independent sort anyways which she always encouraged.

So Ongaku-sensei and his partner whom she dubs Taicho because the dog gets more respect out of humor reasons vanish from Konoha into the outer territories around it for a short while.

It's pretty easy, and whatever doubts Ongaku had are swiftly gone. Hiruzen's little brat definitely was wasting her time in the academy waiting for her peers to catch up. She's one of the ones who while able to no doubt work just fine with others is at her best when not taking them into consideration. Some are that way. Many of those end up in ANBU eventually. Because while teamwork is invaluable the ability to branch off and get something done without anyone else worrying unless you ask for it is the whole reason ANBU members are so few. They just are always changing masks so that it seems like there are so many more.

The real reason he agreed to try running the child through her paces though is because while his body is repairing he can't go on real missions of his caliber and they are always shoving Jounin on mandatory leave be it psych or not, into being team leaders.

The chance to just deal with one brat? Worth the whining he expected since it was an orphan, sister to the demon container or not.

She surprises him. Oh sure, Ongaku had read the reports and it stated she often hunted small game to bring to the orphanage and was mellow when not fighting but this?

Yeah. He gets this.

The moment they are in the woods and the sounds of civilization has faded she just comes _alive_. The report stated she had a good sense of smell and her mouth is left partly open and she dose this thing with her tongue that he'd call panting if it actually went out of her mouth. She moves in the woods with only a little clumsiness, adjusting. Her steps are though, odd. Her gait off, and though he goes to correct her he pauses. Because she is not efficient in her little walk out here but she's not even stirring the grass.

He leaves it be. Good ninja don't risk destroying a natural skill they can't reteach.

()()()()()()

"Let the girl hunt on her own." Ryo is a big dog. One of the biggest of his litter and Ongaku frowns as he looks at the tan and brown companion. Until now they'd both been hunting and he had been trying to teach the girl to set traps. But she's touchy and glaring even as she observes.

"I'm just trying to help her." He defends himself, not that anyone else would understand them but he's Inuzuka and speaking to his nin dog was one of the first things he learned.

"She's a natural. Let her go. Wait."

He wants to argue but as good as his instincts are...he's still human. "Oi puppy!"

He calls her that specifically for the disgusted sneer at his nickname.

"Try to rustle up food for both of us tonight!"

Ongaku is surprised when she glances at Ryo who simply tilts his head, before she drops the rest of her gear there at camp and slips off into the green.

She comes back empty handed later and he almost comforts her but there is the scent of blood to her though she is not covered in it. "I need assistance bringing it back, sensei."

He laughs and follows, thinking she got too many rabbits or something.

He was not expecting the deer. He has no idea how she even brought it down though the killing stroke is evidenced easily enough as a precise cut at the neck.

This far out it has to be one of the wild ones the Nara will sometimes capture to breed with their own stock. They all know not to do anything, but he reminds himself she's an orphan. "Impressive..though for the future don't bring down any deer near Konoha. The Nara have claim to them."

"You cannot own that which is wild." She says it simply and hasn't gutted it yet to not draw the scavengers so he starts to help out. He goes to set the organs out but is surprised when she grabs the liver and some of the other parts.

"Well Ryo will thank you for that."

She looks at him puzzled. "This is for us. We need the nutrition just as much."

Ryo collapses into the floor in laughter because he's always been lecturing his human partner about leaving the good parts. Ongaku ends up eating a lot of parts that he wouldn't have because to refuse another's kill is just rude. It doesn't mean he enjoys it.

()()()()()()()

She doesn't bring down a deer again.

Instead for all the lack of efficiency in her 'padding about' as he starts to think of her stealthy gait, it is a constant thing for her to hunt as long as he gives an answering nod when she does this particular head tilt for permission he's come to recognize. If they pass a stream and a flicker of scales catches her she dives off to sit and wait before spearing a fish for later. She catches rabbits and squirrels with well aimed weaponry. She'll skin them swiftly, clean them, Ryo helping himself to the discarded parts and after a quick rinse drops them into an oil cloth bag to cook later.

It's treated in some way that keeps it from staining or smelling and just needs a good cleaning after.

They eat well.

()()()()()()()()

The ground they cover is insane considering her lack of adult stamina but not once does she complain. She is at home in the trees in a way that makes him smile though he spends a lot of time showing her how to tree walk. She is a natural climber even without that though and if there is a branch when they wait she is up it. She hangs most their meals too while they go and train.

At the end of the week he sees what Ryo had meant.

No, it isn't just ANBU that is meant for Himitsu. She's a huntress of the most natural sort.

"When we get back..I want you to learn about hunter nin."

There's a shiver and a tremulous smile. It's the most genuine one he's ever seen out of her. It only took 24 hours for a week for him to really see.

He sends a note to Hiruzen saying they'll be an extra week because they've gone a lot further than intended.

()()()()()()

By the time the three weeks are up and they walk back inside Konoha's gates Ongaku has shared that he has a chakra injury that burned the channels of his main arm and is taking time to heal. Because of this only being a set back and not a career ender he is teaching her to be ambidextrous as he is. The Hokage is very pleased and passes her forehead protector over. Both men take a moment to enjoy the look of wonder as she turns it over in her hands. It's on a black band and after just a moment, she ties it around her waist.

"I thought the fashion was for girls to wear it around their neck?"

Himitsu wrinkles her nose and they laugh.

She never tells them that she refuses to wear even a mock collar. Never again.

()()()()()()

It's a few months before she runs into Itachi. He seems weary but greets her contently and introduces his teammate's, Shisui and Taro who is right in between the two cousins of his in years. The trio of Uchiha were a new concept for a specialist chunin team with Shisui training to be a jounin commander only because of their age. Often groups of the clans with the same skills are sent out because they vastly increase their efficiency.

"Ah." Itachi notices her waist and smiles. "Congratulations."

"What another early graduate?" Taro seems weary of the idea but she just inclines her head in answer.

"Who with?" Shisui says implying that Itachi has given some form of idea what advice he has shared. Perhaps even received on her behalf from the other boy.

"Inuzuka Ongaku."

Taro whistles. "Heard he's hard. Stubborn. Runs his teammate's ragged and likes to avoid comforts."

She blinks because yes she could see where the trip they took may seem hard to those of Konoha but what they did? The constant travel and foraging and hunting, the sparring and mock battles and such? That was what her entire child hood was. Before her name was Himitsu. Sometimes she forgets that even shinobi children have a life where they can go to a store or stall and purchase food and garments, not either find a way to make them, barter, or beg in the worst of situations. That they have clothing and beds and fresh water. So many things that she rarely saw and never on this level. Even her sisters hadn't truly adjusted to such novelties which were far below what is always present here.

"I enjoyed it." And she did, so she doesn't hide her content smile that is more of a smirk. Because the entire time she wasn't doubted once she'd shown she could handle something. She got to practice her skills more and more and not concern herself if he could handle it. She was out in the woods and the wilds that she had so missed. Indeed there was very little that made her miss Konoha.

But her father's, her true father, his teachings run deep and mark her very soul and since she has one she calls brother here she will always return to him.

"I'm glad." Itachi says softly and reading his body language..yes he trusts his teammate's implicitly. Very well.

"I have another question for you."

"Yes?" He has a smile because a lot of the time she comes with questions and yet if he does not know she does not mind.

"tell me what you know of hunter nin?"

The three boys are surprised and resume taking turns sparring with each other as one will sit and talk to her about what they know. It turns out to be very little. They are the nin that go after all the other nin who abandon the village. They are called on to work with and apart from ANBU as a whole. Primarily though it is the hunter nin who are the boogey men of shinobi. If you defect, from any village, the hunter nin are sent out to take you down. If you manage to bring down one from someone elses village the payments are immense. Be it in gold or secrets.

"I want that."

"It's hard Himitsu-chan.." Taro speaks, comfortable with her since Itachi is and it still bemuses all of them that upon seeing their sharingan her reaction is to giggle and smile. Itachi's told them of her as a child and his mother of course, and such a strange thought a non clan member seeing comfort but not anything to envy in their eyes.

"Ongaku-sensei told me to learn of it. I think he knew it'd suit me."

"Oh?"

"I'm a _huntress."_ And there's a strange inflection to the word but Taro shrugs it off. All Uchiha end up in ANBU or the military police so it's not really that unusual an idea.

()()()()()()()

Ongaku is thrilled that she tracks him down and not only finds him but tries to trap him the next day. It doesn't work, of course. Still it's impressive and even more so because as his comrades look at it later and whistle..that is razor wire. Those are sharpened senbon and kunai that were rigged. It was set by his home that she managed to sneak in to the apartment complex despite the other Inuzuka and figure out which was his place. If he actually used his window like most ninja instead of the door because of Ryo he'd have been dodging.

"That's set to actually maim or kill." One of his jounin companions says in a tone that is half startled and half impressed.

"I was teaching her traps for catching prey. I meant food though.." He is smiling however.

"The intent is all I was commenting on."

"He wouldn't take me seriously otherwise." Himitsu says calmly from where she's tied and has Ryo watching over her. She isn't even fuming that she didn't succeed. Nor should she be, she's made her point. It's just all the better that he had a few friends over for a drink.

"And if your chakra hadn't flared slightly when you left the window we would have had trouble detecting you." One of them humms, nodding. "You climbed up without chakra?"

"I'm a good climber. The fact the building is older and has window ledges is helpful."

The four jounin are all looking at Ongaku with varying level's of 'dude, what?' because Himitsu is only eight. She didn't beat any records because she didn't graduate properly but she's still insanely young. Even the current ultimate genius training to be Jounin Itachi is twelve.

But he's Uchiha. That he's set the bar impossibly high is sort of accepted.

"Well you got all of our attention little puppy.." he grins as she snarls at him and smirks. "What did you want to tell me?"

Himitsu may be bound on the floor with a giant dog over her but as the snarl eases out you'd never know she was inconvenienced. "I want to be a hunter nin."

"You have a long ways to go getting caught like that." One of his friends chortles and she smirks.

That is the first sign.

Because it's of course, not so easy. "Yes but you've all been touching the wire and didn't realize I coated it with a numbing agent."

They check. Sure enough it'll take some time but has already absorbed through their skin and the wire of course cut through gloves that only one of them wears. Before long they'll have pins and needles for days. That she was willing to deal with it herself to make her point is something all on it's own and explains the chakra flare when she went to escape, she needed to enhance her grip because it had started to set in.

"Well I'll be..she's sneaky."

It is really a bit pathetic that she can catch them off guard like that but they are young for jounin. Himitsu, despite her form..is not.

()()()()()()()

A few days later with instructions Naruto is handed the jar of numbing agent and a pair of much better medical gloves to work with and told what it does. He coats the doors and handles and switches in the academy and apparently the toilet seats and skips the day.

Best sister.

()()()()()

"Someone wants to meet you."

This time Himitsu is with Itachi and Shisui and the way they stiffen..

"Still not interested."

"You'll need their help to achieve your goals."

"Hm not right now."

"If you change your mind." the figure tosses her a scroll and vanishes.

"Himitsu..you..that was.."

"You know of them?"

The Uchiha share a look before warning her to be careful without a single useful bit of information. Something they feel they cannot say. Finding out that they've approached her for years now has them more ill at ease.

"Answer me two questions. Could whomever they know help me?"

"Yes." It's too swift an answer. Too cautious to risk hesitating. The memories are not so well boxed up as she likes and she just nods.

"Are there other ways?"

They relax and nod and so she tucks the scroll away without opening it.

"I'm not always good at following orders, especially if I don't know the source." she says and then turns to resume the previous conversation.

When she leaves though the Uchiha are both worried.

Why is Root trying to contact a promising orphan? Normally it's just grab and go. This constantly enticing is new.

()()()()()()

"There's a great deal of ferocity in you but you hide it away." Ongaku says once, casually. Too casually. But the imposter is good, except that Ongaku rarely leaves Ryo all day even when he is scheduled to be at the vet and his scent is wrong though the henge is _flawless_. Except he doesn't have dog smell even if he has henged the few stray dog hairs upon his outfit and Ongaku isn't always followed by Ryo he'd at least have his scent on him from some point in the morning. She is a huntress though and gives nothing to the surface.

"I save it for when it is needed, sensei." She corrects gently.

"There are ways to bring it out, control it. Get to your goal of being a hunter nin swifter."

Himitsu cannot help herself and she laughs. For just a second, too swift to hear but she _feels_ it, the laugh is richer and older. She smirks then, but does not make eye contact because she knows this is an imposter trying like Hiruzen once did to lay a trap. But it is for a lessor beast. Bigger, more credit given but still far too small. A fox or a racoon's trap. It's so far off target that it puts her in a good mood.

"I am already a _huntress_ sensei. I just lack the experience and the title."

"Don't forget the mask." It's a chiding. Because this is not her sensei she feels no hesitation in unsheathing her metaphorical claws.

"The mask is for when I wish to be _seen_ not when I am hunting. After all, it's best if they never know I was even there."

"Well said."

The trap is side stepped this time. She doesn't feel like pouncing.

()()()()()()()

She does not tell Ongaku-sensei. She tells Itachi. Itachi who loves his little brother as much as she does Naruto, who runs into her walking and picking up their respective siblings. Itachi who she views as a lion who hasn't grown into his mane. He is the lazy indulgent family male, who only rises to battle when it is needed. It is not a bad thing in the least. She suspects that they are much better friends than she would have thought herself able to have with her personality.

For just a moment she thinks on if she had been born to the Uchiha...she does not need to doubt that they would have seen through her, eventually to the real potential she leaves carefully smothered. They would not tolerate her sun lazing and would have pushed her as they push her friend.

Konoha would have been chaining a monster.

It is ironic that as she rubs Naruto's cheek, she has no idea they already have done so to a much bigger one and she is in the dark as much as they are.

()()()()()

"I don't like it." Is all Itachi will tell her. He's always been the silent type but so has she. She simply nods and lets the topic go.

"Do you want to spar?" He asks softly and she freezes. "I know they say you're not good at holding back but I'm good." He doesn't brag. He doesn't need to. It is that which lets her finally incline her head in agreement. Because if Itachi is saying he is good at something he's better than even her sensei most likely.

If not? Well the beast beneath her skin is not confirmed to be there.

It's brutal.

His sharingan is blazing as he tries to catch what she will do next, what jutsu, what actions. It's a sudden shock. Because it seems that Himitsu is blanking out in that way and moves like an animal does without planning and thought and he can't predict her motions. They are not using jutsu but he used his sharingan out of habit and just watching her is..

Different.

She's fast, flexible, and her moves are ones he is not familiar with. When she blocks it feels like he is hitting stone, when she strikes it is with every ounce of muscle in her form. He doesn't hold back either and hits just as hard. Slowly because he can plan ahead, he starts winning.

And then Himitsu is laughing. It's a strange sound because it is so free but this time when she lunges.

Her eyes flicker. Brighter. As if they just lit up from within.

It's gone in an instant but he can't help but ask. "What was that? Your eyes.."

"Secret." She's smiling though and it's the most alive he's seen her so he dives back into the dance. Neither of them is really thinking, just attacking and dodging and while if he pulled out anything but taijutsu he could win it's nice. This is after all, a wonderful way to learn of someone.

She stops then when something makes her eyes flick to the side just as he senses chakra and they both hold perfectly still.

It's a root agent again.

"Himitsu. Someone wishes to meet you."

"I'm busy." there's a harsh tone to her voice from their exertion.

"I am afraid this time I am not to take no for an answer."

Himitsu goes still. The root agent and Itachi's eyes lock onto her because _that_ is the sort of stillness one does when preparing for a kill. She should not know this. It is entirely too silent. But then Himitsu looks up, eyes lock onto his red ones.

"I'll be by after, Itachi. Do tell your mother I'll be late for dinner?" It's so soft and clever and believable. Yet if he had offered it would be suspicious. He just nods.

Himitsu pads with a rolling gait to the root operative. "Lead the way."

It seems all the more ominous to Itachi, that they just walk off.


	3. Chapter 3

AN: I expect this to be confusing. It's how it works.

()()()()()()

"You are not very good at accepting invitations." Danzo's eyes rake over the girl in front of him. She has much of her parents potential and he fully approves of how she is going about things but it is raw. He wishes to shape her, smooth out the rough edges and apply the varnish. She's a wonderful tool already but roughly hewn.

"You took a long time to come out."

Danzo is pleased that somehow she _knew_ it was him and not her sensei. This tells him there is even more to this girl, more that she can do. For Konoha, for him.

"I wish to help you."

She tilts her head, her eyes are hooded. "With how high a price?"

"Nothing you wouldn't do already."

He explains simply, leaving out the details but he is determined to have her. But she is _unlike_ Itachi and Kakashi, Yamato, Kabuto..so many others. She is not obedient. He has seen it, had it observed. There is a wildness to her and to mold her too tightly would shatter that. She is a born hunter, knows this, tells it to everyone but he thinks he is the only one who has _listened_ besides her sensei.

He tells her that. It is gratifying to see her smirk, the pleasure at him having understood drawing her into his fold all the more.

"No mark" She hisses when he mentions secrecy and his blood chills. "I can scent the power and the ink upon them and I will _not be shackled and chained!"_ It is vehement. Danzo passes it off as thinking she knows of her brother. Why not? Hiruzen is soft enough to have told the girl who at least is rational unlike her fool of a brother whom it seems claimed it from both their parents leaving him with just the sunny foolishness.

"I need assurances." He waits, curious as to what she will offer instead. Judging from the sharp look she gives him, she understands what he is asking.

"...I am beginning to believe you can help me. No one else picks up on anything."

There is a raging blaze of triumph that pours through Danzo because he knew there was more to this girl. He has experience in shinobi. "No one else sees what you tell them." He agrees, and it is in half disgust and half amusement because really, that a child picks up on things the adults and veterans do not.

"...Eventually I will be able to see in the dark." This she knows. Remembers. Not in straight black of course she cannot help that but her eyes were those of a feline, only better. That she's seeing better, and Itachi mentioned the gleam to them earlier just has confirmed at least that will be hers. That it is chakra forcing what her mind thinks should be there is possible and it makes Himitsu ache within her soul because she longs for so much of whom she was before everything she lost. Her eyes, her sense of smell..her hearing. All of these are slowly improving and she thinks it is somehow the chakra picking up on her subconscious expecting these things.

Which is just as dangerous because while much of what she was is missed, there are some things that her body and mind accepted as normal that she would love to forget.

Danzo seems pleased with her admission though and after a few more questions, because they really knew nothing of Minato and his family so much can be accepted, the details are begun. Since she will not be sealed there is a threat casually laid upon her brother's life that makes her snarl and bristle and her heart is aching because she cannot risk a mark upon her again and it just means that Naruto must grow strong himself. Also, she is going to be assigned a 'partner'. It will be hidden as someone who will befriend her, much as she does with Itachi.

That he is one of Danzo's doesn't really phase her.

Because for the first time she's having chakra in the ways of hunter nin laid out before her in an explanation and she's _hungry_.

Danzo was one in his prime. No one knew. Not even his closest friend. The records are always destroyed once the bounties are done. No record of whom is assigned what mask is given, and the documents are always fudged for the sake of payment. When she is a fully fledged one the Hokage will know, but that and her fellow hunter nin will be all unless she is working with someone in ANBU and they guess.

"It'll be a while before you have enough of a grasp to let you go out on an assisted hunt but we shall get your mask started" He's already explained a true hunter nin's mask has layers and levels of seals disguising them. It's something they can't risk for everyone as the effort that goes into them is substantial or they'd give them to ANBU. Indeed her first four assignments will be unpaid save for a living stipend to cover the costs and then a portion always subtracted over the course of her career until the princely sum is paid. She will always have the one mask and losing or breaking it will be the end of her career.

She cuts him off. There is no compromise she shall make on this. "Feline."

"Oh?"

Danzo's eyes are sharp like a blade and cut deep as he gazes at her, awaiting why. Furious at her disrespect but he knows whatever she says will give away a little more. Another part of her secrets.

"I will see in the dark, and I move like a cat." Let him make of that a child's foolish playing of the facts. He smirks indulgently. He'll give her time, she's already gone along so willingly with much of this and he _wants_ her for Konoha.

"Any in particular?"

"Something spotted." She doesn't know if they have anything she would be familiar with here. She's heard of tigers yes but..

"Very well."

The meeting ends soon after.

()()()()()()

In the privacy of her home with the lights off and suppressing her chakra- because this never needed chakra would it now?- she licks her lips and peels off her clothing so she can better tell if that is an itch or her garment. Her eyes started to adjust.

Maybe.

Just maybe.

She falls deep into meditation. Remembrance is sweet and longing is bitter..but though nothing happens she feels it sleeping inside. She's aware of it now as if it's on the inside of her skin. Like a reversible coat that she can't unfasten to flip about.

She's still there.

Himitsu places her face in her hands to hide her expression just in case..

Whether it's natural or her brain knows it is how it should be and her chakra is adapting does not matter.

She can feel her other skin.

May that wonder be the only thing that comes back though..

()()()()()()()()

Naruto loves toads and frogs and the color orange.

Himitsu loves greens of all sort and plants and that which is soft against her skin. She doesn't like patterns unless it is to mimic nature. But she likes a softer orange, one like a great cat's goldenrod hide.

She never tells that to Naruto.

()()()()()()

Danzo is brutal. Fierce. Unyielding unless it is a carefully thought retreat. She has known since the first meeting when he told her so much that any ground Danzo gives would be taken several times over and drenched in blood. When she is not with Ongaku-sensei assisting him in C-rank missions and all the drudgery of learning to write reports as much as refining her trap and tracking skills in a ninja fashion that is. If not there, she is visiting Itachi, Shisui, Taro. They have just made jounin.

They spar with her because her fighting is so unpredictable that it doesn't matter that she is two levels below them in promotions. Because the best swordsman does not fear the second best, but the worst. Since there is no rhyme or reason that they can follow, the Sharingan is rendered useless.

They have become too accustomed to utilizing it in battle.

They begin to integrate ninjutsu and genjutsu into the battles, though it is a challenge for them to remember not to use the sharingan to break genjutsu. Because they have only had human senses though Himitsu has an advantage. Her ears and nose are just as important, if not more so, than her eyes. Most forget to impact those enough when creating illusions. Her ninjustu's are ...interesting.

She's taken to finding ones that use everything around them to impede their actions to make it easier for her to attack.

None of the three miss what it really is. These are tricks of a hunter nin. To set up the killing blow. She's still new at them, and after she informed Danzo of being able to sense his root operatives they've switched out for those who are far more subtle.

So when she next ventures into the many twists and corridors that double back and pass through seals that disorient to get where she is going, following one who is marked since she refuses it and there's no other way in. He is ready and has a series of critiques and methods for her to work on.

Danzo is _fearsome._

He is ruthless. He is full of a restless energy and drive that Himitsu feels is wasted on the world of shinobi and shadows as it is now. That which she was thinks he would have done well in her previous world. A warrior like Danzo has no place in the peace striving world. But in a land of continuous death and destruction where every moment could mean the end for an entire race of people? Where figuring out whom to sacrifice next and when was a matter of trying to chip away steadily at the base of a marble statue so it could topple? Yet every death wound the noose tighter around those who survived? At the darkest hours she remembers..

Yes.

She would have followed one like Danzo then.

It helps her ignore what he does now that is in no way _right_ but is effective.

()()()()()()()


	4. Chapter 4

Naruto is in the academy for his second year. Almost his third. He argues and talks about the kids there and how they pick on him for being an orphan but the fact his sister tested out of the academy and was snatched up by a famous tracker nin seems to have won him a lot of points with the Inuzuka and Aburame kids. Even Sasuke who he shares a rivalry with doesn't know how to best handle an argument since once or twice when chasing after Itachi he has seen the girl there sparring with his brother and his teammate's.

He's got enough of a grasp of the academy style that Himitsu is comfortable helping him with it and it only takes a few _careful, so careful_ spars with her little brother that brings her back to some of the most wonderful memories from before and training her sisters...to see he is wild. More brash than she is but the same feral motions corrupt his actions and she will turn his wrist here, show him to strike from a different angle there..

he lacks the grace she still carries in her motions but it's enough for him to start learning how to modify the forms to create his own.

"I get the urge to bite sometimes.." He confesses shyly one day as she's patching him up after a spar. Nothing much, but he blocked wrong and started a punch too soon so there are small scrapes to tend to.

"Sometimes a bite is a good move. Be careful though, for it will always get infected and there are many whom you do not wish to get their diseases. There is no way to be certain someone is clean."

It always makes Naruto tilt his head when she answers like that. It is not socially acceptable but Himitsu hides in plain sight. By example, she has been teaching Naruto to do the same.

()()()()()

"Ah..See..Himitsu-san..I..I like you!"

It is the strangest thing she's ever had to go through. Himitsu blinks slowly, confused because this is..different.

"Okay?" She asks and the boy in front of her seems to deflate visibly, causing more whispering. Technically he should be her classmate but she doesn't know this kid. If she ever did it's been years and he wasn't anyone of note to her-most children weren't- in the classroom.

Ongaku-sensei is there and choking he is laughing so hard, they were just delivering a missive to a client from out of town where they have just returned from and this average boy stepped into her path and said he had something he needed to discuss.

"Do I know you?"

He whimpers and slinks off, Himitsu turns confused eyes to her sensei, but he's nearly collapsed laughing and no help.

When she tells Shisui and Taro, for Itachi is busy with clan heir stuff, both are just staring at her.

"I think the world is going backwards. Cute girls getting confessions and acting like they are clueless..." Taro mutters and Shisui is for once speechless.

In the end, with much red faced stammering on the side of the boys they manage to explain that "I like you" is a sort of expression of admiration closer to what Himitsu thinks of as courting overtures.

How..odd. The whole lot of things which Shisui and Taro are only too happy to delve into and tell false stories one upping the other, on human courtship strikes Himitsu as overly unnecessarily complex.

She prefers her memories. Where while there were many ways to it as adults, one generally just expressed interest and if it was returned, retired together for a time. If it ended up seeming valid one stayed together. Fortunately they were far enough removed from their ancestors that unlike those first ones, they were spared the seasonal heats found still in the beasts of any world.

But why one would give food that they did not hunt or prepare themselves to someone, when the entire idea was showing you could care for each other if one was hurt or ill...well Himitsu not for the first time simply sighed and decided that things were just odd.

She was able to throw fireballs and make the earth swallow her enemies. Odd was established firmly.

()()()()()()

Curiously it is Danzo who sits her down and plying her with tea of a bitter blend that reminds her of grass and summer days, and snacks to get all the details from her. Perhaps it should have been awkward but Himitsu knows he just wishes to get in her head better since he cannot mark her. She is content with that.

"Generally such behaviors are seen as desirable." He finishes, explaining many of the overtures he has witnessed in his many years and how they can be turned upon someone for a kill, or the like. Everything with Danzo is either a lesson or extracting information to use against you.

" Wastes of time." She has ceased watching her words. Danzo sees through much of it but he doesn't know what he is looking at so the mirage only shows mostly what he expects to see. It is rather fortunate he never thought to look below it, she supposes.

"How so?" If someone were to walk in on them they may faint or start screaming Kai but this was all part of her training. It was something a few of the root operatives sat in on because it was a study in how one gave and withheld information to watch them. Root did need all the help it could get to play even partially normal.

Sane wasn't even in the picture.

"If one is up front about intentions that saves time and energy on both parties."

"And if they were playing you false?"

Himitsu blinks. "Is this one of your hypothetically working on a mission query's?"

"No." Danzo smirks though, for there have been many of those as well. He enjoys that she separates what ones does in mission parameters from what one does personally. It's a lesson that outside of Root is nearly impossible to teach ninja without them being unstable. Himitsu takes the time to think, fingers tapping at her thigh.

"Nothing. Oh certainly I could kill them if it was in mission parameters but if they fooled me they must have information so I would interrogate them _fully_ this time." She shrugs then, amused as she sets her tea down. "Outside of a mission? Why should I care?"

Danzo laughs because that is one area he will not go, explaining to a girl why she should have an interest in boys.

()()()()()()()

Himitsu is cornered by Shisui. She tilts her head and just waits, it is odd that he'd come out so far to find her. She's outside Konoha's walls which really aren't hard to leave. You just walk out the gate and sign back in. As long as you've a headband and log in and out no one truly cares. Especially since they all know she's out getting food that she and Naruto mostly live off because the budget orphans have, and the little bit she brings back for her low rank missions, don't afford them much. She's taken to getting extra rabbits and fish because a few of the restaurant's will trade her rice and vegetables they've already cooked since they get them at far cheaper prices then the kids could.

Assuming they could cook very well.

No, it's far easier to just barter. Himitsu blinks as Shisui drops before her and his eyes are bright red.

"I know you're working for Danzo but.."

"Wrong." She grimaces. Working for? She works for herself and her brother. "He's training me to a be a hunter nin. That's all." And of course she tells Shisui because he already knew. For some reason it makes Shisui just shiver in relief and nod before he comes within her personal space.

"I don't want to involve you. But there's things going on and I need to ensure the information is never lost. So I want to put you under a genjutsu to lock what I know in your mind. It'll be locked up, not even a Yamanaka could find it and you won't know it is there. It'll take another sharingan to reveal and one who knows the answer to a question I am not going to tell you. It's just in case. Will you let me?"

It is the first time Shisui has asked her for anything. He's helped her, often through Itachi and answered her questions, sparred with her. And so this young boy aged in a way that she relates to makes Himitsu realize perhaps he's been her friend all along as well. She's never been very good at being aware of such things.

"You're going to do something stupid."

"No. No.." Shisui trails off and rubs a hand over his face. "I'm trying to stop something stupid but just in case...you're the only one not Uchiha. The only one I feel I can ask."

The predator within her responds to that. Because she remembers those days when hiding and racing and the pain of losing when you had to select which was your next move and none were okay. Those levels of choices are weighing on Shisui and he doesn't want to tell her so she is not burdened and Himitsu remembers making those same decisions not to share her burden because she couldn't bear to force someone else to help carry them. For some, sharing is easing the weight. For others knowing that you've let them do so is more painful, it helps to look at those who instead help you by not knowing.

"Of course." What else can she say?

The red of his eyes flash and though it feels like flames snap and coil along her mind it is not causing her pain. She feels instead like some dark mass is set to sleep harmless along her cerebral fluid and then it fades as if nothing happened.

Shisui gives her a shaky smile before he just leaves. Before he says something.

It probably would have helped if he knew the truth about her. Because a cat is _curious._ Himitsu leans back against the tree she was at and slowly breathes in and out her mouth and nose, analyzing the scents. He's not that desperate yet so the time for Shisui to act hasn't become set in stone yet. There is no Root agent nearby, not for these paltry food hunts. Her instincts are telling her Shisui as very capable as he is, is in over his head and bears watching. Guarding.

After all she's just realized he's her friend and she is possessive.

()()()()()()()()()()()()

Ongaku takes her on a few longer missions with another of his Jounin friends. They take a few days here, a week or so there and Danzo has handed her a paper each time to memorize. People, targets to take out without giving alert or informing her team where she goes. He has special scrolls for her to seal their bodies into because she cannot yet dispose of them on site. Himitsu is not an idiot, she recognizes there's something different about the corpses of each that Danzo wishes to plumb for secrets but observation tells her each time they were not people who would be overly missed. Lower ranking nin. Technically higher than her, but Danzo has trained her.

Trained her as a hunter nin learns and it is different than ANBU or traditional ninja. They are more in touch with the shadows and the silence like their legacy once was. Before the clans emerged as powers, when it was just a few select members finding good apprentices. One on one teachings. Himitsu thrives in this way.

Not once has she had a problem slipping away from her team. Usually going to 'bathe' which can take hours if they are relaxing somewhere and they don't fuss over it. None of the missions are difficult after all. Most are simple infiltration, sabotauge. They would only need the two Jounin for it but three person cells are traditional and Himitsu is hardly a difficult person to work with.

The best part of going to bathe or soak in the hot springs is it easily hides her scent when she's done filling her scrolls. Those are easy enough to hide, she just has a few others in the red coated paper that denote them as kunoichi tools for 'that time of the month'. She swaps the paper onto her body storage scrolls and no one even brings up that she has them. It's a common precaution for kunoichi to bring them in case they suddenly begin outside the village. Even if they haven't hit that stage each genin member is given one when they start taking missions. It causes less notice than a hairbrush.

If Himitsu is enjoying handing Danzo 'feminine needs' scrolls well that's all to her pleasure. He actually has seemed quite entertained by the clever ruse.

()()()()()

She gets back one day, still cloaking herself effortlessly from a training run that Danzo gave her. Nothing special just going out and back practicing slipping beyond the guard and not getting found. She has a plain dark gray mask over her entire face for this and hood and long garments light on her body but snug. Himitsu is a natural at hiding in the slightest of cover.

It is then she sees where she had tracked down Danzo, the confrontation with Shisui.

Shisui is fast, but she is faster and because as much as she respects Danzo, Shisui is her friend, her comrade and so she holds _nothing_ back when she gives chase. He's bleeding, one eye and Himitsu knows there will be others there soon and likely he is looking for Itachi so for now she just follows. When he has told Itachi bits and pieces and they do not make any sense Himitsu strikes as she sees his hand go upwards.

A senbon that was not deflected because he was too caught up in pain and what he was about to do and Himitsu has dulled all her senbon so they do not reflect light makes Shisui crumble towards the water unconscious. Itachi's cry is striking, but Himitsu will deal with him later as she moves through the earth as if swimming, having dove down and pulled Shisui into the ground with her, a dropped explosive tag drawing Itachi's attention elsewhere just long enough to pull this off.

Danzo doesn't expect her to return for a week or more. She had just felt restless. This gives her time.

()()()()()()()

When you are willing to go slowly and burn a lot of chakra under the earth it's very easy to go places in secret. Himitsu has never had a problem with her strength, something often remarked on she got from her mother. Keeping Shisui knocked out is easy, stripping him of his gear and disposing of it in the ground along with his head band is just as easy. Her spare set of clothing, meant to sleep in usually are loose pants and a large shirt which works to dress him in. That done, and a rough bandage over his eye and he looks completely forgettable.

She makes for three days away from Konoha before sealing up a cave around them and deciding it's best to stop knocking him out. She does ensure he is well tied up and senbon keeping him from using his chakra though, all useful things she's learned in a combination of memories and Danzo for all that Danzo doesn't understand why Himitsu enjoys the chakra less techniques that are more antiquated history for hunter nins than not.

"When I get free you are dead." Shisui hisses and Himitsu is not surprised. She still has her mask on.

"Well you were doing something stupid." She replies and tugs it off. The look of shock on Shisui's face is soon replaced by unbridled fury and it is an ugly expression on the generally affable young man.

"I trusted you!"

"..." Himitsu has no response, instead she leans back against the stone waiting for him to stop making a fool out of himself. "Are you done?" She asks when some of his ranting finishes and she can literally see when the remaining black eye -not enough chakra to let it go red, she is curious not stupid- locks onto her and realization sets in.

"You aren't doing this for Danzo."

"I was returning from a training jaunt early and caught the exchange you had. Considering you left something in my brain I figured you were about to be stupid and stopped you. You seemed to want to be seen going into the water so I knocked you out with a senbon and then pushed us both into the cliff side with a well placed Doton and made my way slowly out."

()()()()()()

Sadly a few days later Shisui is still being an idiot and wanting to go back. Though the entire story has come out, Himitsu is not sympathetic. Oh certainly the slaughter of the clan is a horrid idea but the plan he had to try the genjutsu certainly wouldn't work.

"All Genjutsu's can break. Besides the problem isn't your clan." that gets Shisui's attention and so she sneers, which as always makes Shisui look at her oddly. She hasn't really been hiding her nature as much though and before this all their interactions were decidedly simpler. "It was the village. How they were treating your clan. All that forcing your clan to abandon the plan would do is put them back on the first square and the animosity would build up again, if anything happened to break your genjutsu it would be even worse."

Shisui deflates and looks like she just gutted him. How was it no one pointed that out? There are times humans just don't make sense to her.

"You know you sometimes make me think you're not Himitsu." Shisui says and she looks over.

"No one ever _listens_ when I talk. I've never hidden anything." And it's quite true. "Ongaku-sensei is the first who listened once Ryo told him to. Danzo paid attention. He still sees what he wants though."

"You are loyal to him." And the last word is full dark roiling hate and that Himitsu understands.

"No. But he is useful and teaching me what I need to know. I don't agree with what he does, Shisui." Himitsu runs a hand through her hair and then locks her eyes to him, eyes she can see in the darkness of his orbs are reflecting light and probably have a more feline hue to them right then in the firelight though she is still curious how he made a smokeless fire. "I think Danzo belongs to a time long ago when he would have been considered a great man, as it is he is out of time and some day needs to be put down. Until then though I learn what I can from him because no one else stepped forward."

It calms Shisui.

"I need to talk to Itachi." He says instead and Himitsu pauses. Until now he's effectively been her prisoner and though she wants him alive she loathes that she's stolen his freedom.

"Will you stay here? I'll need a few days in the village but I'll tell him. If he's not inside I'll wait and then bring him here." She wants to trust Shisui. It's been a long time since she trusted anyone and if Shisui betrays that Himitsu is not entirely sure she'll get over it. Perhaps it leaks into her voice or her body language but Shisui just nods.

"You got rid of my headband so no one would believe I was a ninja anyways."

"Safer"

He gives her a bemused look and Himitsu remembers that one of the conditioning exercises is all nin expect missing nin to wear a scratched out headband. They never think to question it any more than that they breathe.

"Hide as prey and the predators overlook you when having a territorial dispute." It was something she was taught a lifetime ago and though she leaves Shisui a knife so he can hunt and tools for traps they are only of civilian quality. Meant to fish and catch game, not man.

She leaves.


	5. Chapter 5

AN: If you havent noticed by now I am playing VERY fast and loose for this story regarding timeline and events. Himitsu just alters things by being herself and she has no idea of the future in case anyone forgot.

()()()()()

When she returns to Konoha Danzo doesn't even blink at her extended absence because Himitsu seems more dangerous and every time she's a little more wild when she returns, more ruthless, more capable and Danzo enjoys it. She finds out that he's gotten her hunter nin mask and approval of instating her done. So the days pass in being sworn in to the Hokage, registration that is of course not her real name and appearance, and Himitsu is then quietly taken off most the rosters. Ongaku knows and beams at her and gets a rare smile in return. Most of her time now though will not be in missions but hunts. There's a new bingo book in her pocket and it's only after she tucks in Naruto that the news is told.

It is so unexpected that it does surprise her and it is fortunate that it does because she can sense the Root agents tailing her.

Itachi went rogue and killed the clan. Her surprise is more that he actually did it, and she wonders as to the _why_ or even the _how._ Because Itachi was only one person up against many.

That she's demanding the right to hunt him down only has Danzo leering proudly because he sees it as her almost making her own Root exam. Hunting down her friend, a proof of her being a ruthless tool when needed. Of course she's given her blessing and leaves almost right away. It doesn't occur to her to check in on Sasuke, and Naruto as happy as he is to see her, is quite happy for the brief visits because he's proud that she's a wonderful ninja.

Neither of them know it's the fox and feline nature in them however that keeps them so very independent. Just that it works for them.

()()()()()()()

As soon as Himitsu is outside Konoha she looks at the Huntress mask and the sheer delight at what is in her hands makes her vocal cords rumble in a content way. It's a sleek mask, with exagerated lines going up from the eye slots and indeed..there are spots. Not many, but in subtle darker gray on gray patterns over the brows and by the eyes. There is no curve up from the mouth area as is so common making the masks seem eerie in their friendliness. No, the mouth that has been drawn here is just downward lines, slanted as though preparing for a snarl. The nose is done so it seems the nostrils are flared, a scent caught.

It's perfect. She will have to request to meet the artist. When it slips onto her face all the seals that until this point of it's construction have been slowly getting used to her wearing it at times, so it responds now to her chakra. Only her chakra..

It feels as if she is not wearing a mask at all. It took some doing, and a lot longer out of her paycheck to get the mouth and nose area inlaid with a seal that if she directs chakra will blank out scents in the area but she refuses to be victim to such an attack. Even though she knows the spots are only on the mask it feels so right, as if wearing the rendition of a big cat has brought her back more to herself.

The Huntress crouches, and then is off to find Itachi.

()()()()()()()

He's filthy. Looking for someone of that she doesn't doubt and yet it is only the years he's spent sparring with her, talking with her, that alerts Itachi to that particular feel of her presence.

Himitsu has no interest in taking him down though and she just crouches visibly on a branch, mask in place. Itachi slowly draws his hands away from the weapons he had, forehead showing the missing nin mark on his protector. In the end it is Itachi who breaks the stillness.

"Your eyes are glowing."

It is his way of saying he knows it is her. Ever so cautious Itachi, not sure if she's there for him or not and she is _pleased._ The lion has started growing his mane. The Huntress drops to the ground and removes her mask, stowing it away atop her head as she looks up at him, confirming who it is. That she isn't there as a hunter nin.

"Come. Shisui's waiting."

Itachi's eyes widen and it makes sense to him. "You!"

"He was being stupid."

Perhaps it is the way she says it but Itachi just nods and yet Himitsu puts her mask back on and hands over to him her gray one. She had kept it of course and it's best he's not seen for now.

How much trust he shows to follow her, but how much more she shows to let him be at her back when they are alone.

()()()()()()()

The reunion of the Uchiha is blessedly a silent thing. They fall in each other's hold sobbing silently at what was and has been and Himitsu stands guard outside the cave to let them feel they have some privacy and security. She hears Shisui repeating the words she had used before and is grateful that logic has had time to brew.

She's even more relieved he'd stayed. If he hadn't been here..

Eventually they call her in and share the plan they have with her. This one at least, isn't stupid. She was starting to wonder if they could do that.

"I'll be joining the Aktasuki to spy on them..since everyone thinks Shisui's dead we're going to start having him work as a broker of services..say I helped him out once, that way he can gather information on missions and pass it on and we'll have ways to get information in different places. He'll have to be careful never to use his sharingan but.."

"Good." Himitsu nods, lifting a brow as they clearly expected her to argue. "I am a hunter nin, even if just a low ranked one right now. I can go to whatever his alias is as well if in an area and we do have plenty who aren't shinobi that sell out information on low ranking defectors. Most hunter nin won't take those jobs which is why they are B ranked missions, but one who is wanting experience and doesn't have a pride issue? I can make my own niche there and charge a lot less."

"They'll think you're sadistic..just after the kill." Itachi points out hoarsely but Shisui is watching her. He spent longer in her company without them in Konoha now and has started to get a feel for her. Who she really is.

"Not if we tell them the truth. That Huntress is all about the hunt itself. She could even then capture and bring back those they don't want killed.." A much harder task but Himitsu feels her lips curve.

"Huntress?"

"You always call yourself that. I doubt Danzo gave you a good code name."

"Hunter nin do not use them." She says simply and it is true. They do not need to. If they are addressed by the Hokage it is the genus of their apparent mask. She'd be cat, Tiger would be Cat, anything feline would be cat.

"Well I have to have something to call you to any clients and information brokers I deal with so I'm dubbing you Huntress."

The boys witness her eyes literally gleam and seem slit for a moment as she smirks _pleased_ and for just a moment they wonder what secrets the younger girl has.

"I like it." She'd always insisted that is what she was, Shisui has _listened_ to her complaints and he's not throwing away anything she says anymore.

()()()()()()()

She promises to check in on Sasuke for them sometimes too. It wont be easy for Shisui to make it but there's plenty of nobody disabled ninja that leave their villages after being discharged so he wont make waves. Not with the blandness of the Uchiha features if he doesn't activate his sharingan. Himitsu obviously can't bring back Itachi, and while the boys are still disturbed she's so closely in Danzo's grasp they also are relieved someone can keep tabs on him.

So she goes and hunts down someone in the bingo book, scrawls a note to "Shiro" as Shisui can answer to that easily enough they found when tossing out new names for him; thanking him for the information on one sighted in the area and signed Huntress. It's a valid Hunter nin claim, they do this often but drawing their mask, she makes her symbol an easy one. Stripes at an angle, like a claw mark.

Like the spots she wears, this is something she claims for herself in this world. It's a little more herself, and Himitsu begins to think she may start to enjoy her new life finally without always comparing it to her last.

()()()()()()()()

Danzo is pleased with the body she brings back and even more that she managed to track Itachi before losing his trail. He's ANBU, older slightly, far more skilled so Danzo tells her she can always try again. He wishes her to stay in the city a while though so she isn't forgotten and work with other nin. It gives her time to spend with Naruto when not training or doing short missions with Ongaku and she's fine with that.

Not that the siblings do much, they are prone to being utterly lazy together as much as not and it helps Naruto have an alibi for his pranks because he's often seen napping in the sun with his sister.

She can make a henged clone just fine thank you.

At some point she was given a field promotion to Chunin and didn't even realize it or just ignored it because she's bored easily. Ongaku just keeps her flak vest with him to toss at her when they are going somewhere because she hates wearing the extra weight.

Naruto is thrilled to spar with her, he's improved a lot but if one doesn't fight wild themselves they would not see it. She helps him as always, and starts to work with him on being patient, on cornering your opponent. She takes him out to hunt more often and he proves good at it. It makes her entirely proud. She teaches him to keep small things from his best hunts, ones that something memorable happens on or the first time he brings a new prey down. A claw or talon or tooth, feathers, small things. Things he can look back on and be proud of. She's finally come to feel with Huntress as if she is truly blending into Himitsu and so she starts to weave small braids in her loose hair and make beads and charms from her own trophies. When Naruto asks her why she starts to tell him little answers she remembers getting, and giving, many times. Naruto soaks up her stories and what she can tell him of places she has been as well as the strange tales she shares with him.

Tales her people always told to their young. Ones that any bystanders would think are her imagination and Naruto watches how her eyes get faraway and yet passionate and knows these stories are important to Himitsu.

They're always about family, about the hunt and the kills and sharing. Of warmth and loyalty. Of testing waters and avoiding traps and cages.

There are a few small ones of the faint things she remembers about their parents and that he begs to hear over and over. That his hair is the shade of their father and the sound of their mother's voice was alternating soft an rough with boisterous laughter. It's not much but to Naruto it is everything.

When he gleans enough from her tales to get an idea, he hands her one of his most valued trophies. The first time he caught a squirrel. He saved two of the bones from it and brings them out one night shyly.

"Can you make us matching beads? I know I can't wear mine yet.." Oh certainly he could but Himitsu waited until she was chunin and so he's decided that must be a good age to do so and he's going to do the same. It's a rare sight, Himitsu's blue green eyes so wide and her smile so gentle as she takes them from his hand.

"I'll teach you how to make them, and when you finish I will wear them proudly."

They may not say much to each other but only with Himitsu has Naruto learned the value of silence, to read her body language instead. Indeed by contrast he has to be so loud and obvious for anyone to get anything, it's starting to irritate him.

All that fades away though as Himitsu sits, her hands guiding his to shape the bone into long small beads, showing him how to hollow them out and Naruto decides he wants them unpainted and without decoration.

"I'll put yours on a leather cord so you can wear it." She mumbles by his ear as he works to polish them, it's been a long slow process making certain he does it right. The warmth in Naruto's heart is breathtaking. Part of him is glad his sister is not always home, because she's addicting.

Naruto knows people have told him he has a sort of draw that makes people like him when they know him long enough. Hokage and Iruka-sensei have both told him and so has the man at the ramen stand..but he thinks Himitsu's quiet way does too. You just don't realize how much you need it until she's gone.

"If I'm the sun you're the shadow." He says once and Himitsu chuckles softly, ruffling his hair.

"Whatever you say." She means it and Naruto knows it. She believes him.

It's nice that she also struggles with reading and writing. Math isn't even a possibility.

()()()()()()()

The day she checks in on Sasuke he's glaring at her and asking coldly what she wants. Himitsu isn't phased though and simply asks him if he'd like company. When he relents they don't speak at all.

She visits more often and it seems each time his shoulder's relax a little.

One day he speaks up though, breaking the tradition.

"Tell me about Itachi as you knew him." It's not as cold and unaffected a tone as the little bristling cub would like but Himitsu thinks. Remembers when the world seemed to be falling apart and her sisters would ask, or the others they took in, about the Befores. They wanted a piece of what could never again be but especially to forget.

"Itachi could be startled." She begins and Sasuke is staring at her surprised, probably only ever hearing of how competent his brother is. But Itachi wasn't, even if he did kill their clan the reason doesn't matter to the fact he is Sasuke's brother and Himitsu knows a few things about unstable family members. "He hated it, but especially after he'd made Chunin he was great fun to sneak up on. He was always overly cautious and looking out for the larger chakra signatures and would forget that some times genin and students could be sneaky as well."

Himitsu smiles as Sasuke loses a bit of his lost look, hungry. Craving to hear something that doesn't remind him of loss and loneliness and that Himitsu knows and she will give every embarrassing tale she can think of. She'll make certain 'Shiro' shares them with her too so she can have more.

And so little by little Sasuke learns that his brother had such a bad sweet tooth he'd gotten kicked out of ever being able to choose where to get a snack as it was always junk. That he had an absurd fear of vermin if you startled him just right, hilarious considering the meaning of his name. That because of that one time Shisui and Taro got her help to catch a dozen squirrels and knocked them out to hide in Itachi's bed roll on the way back from a mission and he woke up to them all frantically trying to get free. She told him how they would talk of things that seemed entirely unimportant like what areas of the village was best to sneak away to nap in, or which trees had a new birds nest.

"Did you love him?" It's a very surprising question as Himitsu has noticed that people here don't really go yelling that they love someone. It's never bothered her as actions are her way but she pauses. She understands what Sasuke is really asking and humms.

"Itachi was my first real friend. It took me a long time to realize we even were friends, I'm not good at that. Not like many people." Sasuke is nodding and Himitsu guesses after the trauma he's locked himself away as much as she ever had. In this perhaps she can help him and doesn't make eye contact. "He was important to me. He and Taro and Shisui. Taro died first on a mission, just wasn't in the right place. I was told an explosive tag got him and he bled out before they could get help." She doesn't mention the Mangekyou sharingan. That Itachi and Shisui made her agree to never share what she knew but they had to confess to someone and she had been close to Taro as well. "To be honest I didn't realize Taro was my friend either, until after he was gone and I couldn't tell him that. We spent hours training and sparring and talking..or just sitting. The group of us."

Himitsu breathes out then and answers his question. "I loved him as I rarely do others. All of them. Not like his fan girls though." she blinks then and can't help her grin. "Want to hear about the first time someone confessed to me and Shisui and Taro had to explain the idea?"

Of course he did. It was good to see Sasuke crack a smile.

The irony that he and Naruto were rivals never failed to amuse Himitsu.

"Why do you have to go see the bastard anyways?" Naruto grumbled when she came back and Himitsu only ruffled his hair.

"Good nose." It makes Naruto puff up proudly and she means it, that he can tell by her scent where she was makes Himitsu more proud than if he brought home a good grade. She knows which skill will be more useful in his career as a ninja. "Once."

Naruto waits, he knows not to badger when his elder sister pauses and gives strange answers. It means she's trying to align her thoughts and she has as much trouble speaking them sometimes as he does keeping his in. They understand each other when they fight though as it is in a battle you know of your opponent and can discern their nature. It's why he wants to fight sasuke all the time.

"Once I was friends with his brother and cousins, now that they are gone I am one of the few who speaks of them as the people they were rather than the missions and accomplishments. Like our parents."

"oh..." and Naruto trails off because he remembers the time he asked Himitsu how their mother smelled and she took him all over Konoha smelling things until she could introduce him to enough he could sort of imagine her scent himself. Something no one would have guessed, at best if she had worn perfume someone might have been able to describe it but real people had smells of so many layers that it wouldn't have been the same. "Just..spend more time with me okay?"

Himitsu's fingers trail over the back of his neck and she nods.

()()()()()()()

Time mellows. Himitsu is now an official Hunter nin and Huntress goes out often, getting requests some times from those who approach the Hokage saying they have heard Konoha has Huntress and she will take lesser jobs but return them alive if asked. Himitsu deflects Hokage and Danzo's concerns with 'I need as much experience as I can grasp.' and doesn't mind that she has smaller hunter jobs.

Indeed, as new as she is it is highly unlikely she'd be first in line for those that pay well anyways. Instead she plots out where she is going and why and takes her time, always grabbing a few extras but waiting on the bounties. It is only Konoha nin that she must destroy on sight, if she can get to the other village's missing warriors first and claim them, hide them, the secrets they gain are priceless.

Once T&I, Research, and sometimes even the medic's have had them, Danzo takes care of the rest of their remains.

Himitsu _knows_ he does nothing good with them. She's seen what happens when people start experimenting and she hates it beyond all else but she cannot yet take Danzo down. Instead she just ensures something always goes wrong before they get the prisoners. After all, her favorite poison just has long lasting horrid effects corrosive to chakra...and the longer it sits in them the less it seems to be anything other than just the bloodline traits were over exaggerated. Made pitiful in comparison.

There's a few she butchers and sends to Shiro to pass along to their respective villages and then send payment her way instead. Her instincts demand those never make their way into Konoha or anywhere with certain parts intact and Himitsu obeys her instincts.

()()()()()()()

When Kakashi and the Hokage examine the apartment to get a 'feel' for Kakashi's new student they have to dodge all the traps first. Himitsu is inside just watching them and lifts a brow when they ask her about it. "I live here."

"But so does Naruto" The Hokage begins and Himitsu gives a small smile, as if she's talking to a child not the leader of her village.

"Naruto wanted to be a ninja. I never coddled him." And what can they really say to that?

Naruto's room is a disaster but there's as much in the way of animal pelts and strange jars of rocks and claws and Kakashi has to mention it. "Why is he collecting animal parts?" Because that is a warning sign.

"Trophies." Himitsu says idly and it only makes the Hokage look more worried which makes Himitsu roll her eyes. "He caught, killed, cleaned, and we ate. They are reminders that he is capable. Why shouldn't he be proud of it?" They slowly relax but it is still a bit surprising. Then again, there's a very large rack of antlers over the door they see holding scarves and goggles..and there's large deer and such for fur rugs. It does not look like a regular city apartment.

"Why don't you get normal rugs and blankets?" Kakashi asks, he has dogs he isn't confused as much as..well no he _is confused._ Because the last time he'd seen this girl so close she'd been a baby and had screamed at him all the time. Now she's barely a teenager who regards him with too old eyes and her hair is long like Kushina's but interwoven with many braids before being pulled up and in those braids he sees beads. Each a soft off white color. It takes him a moment to realize the scent is bones.

"Orphans have a very small fund provided." Himitsu says and there's just a calm knowing to her voice as she leans against the wall, arms crossed, eyes never leaving him. She is at ease around the Hokage but not him. "When you make genin that fund is stopped, encouraging the use of the D ranks. Either way it doesn't provide enough for us considering our appetites so I hunted from the start and Naruto enjoyed joining me when he could. Anything extra I could take a few places and trade fresh meat for prepared meals. I try to bring a lot to the Ramen stand because if I'm away they'll feed Naruto and deduct it from his bills."

"eats a lot does he?" Kakashi asks, painful flashbacks reminding him. Himitsu tilts her head and opens her mouth but her nose flares and her tongue lifts slightly and then she makes a face.

"You still smell of dog."

Kakashi goes still. A chill rakes it's way down his spine as he is filled with horror. He doesn't want to but he voices it. "Excuse..me?"

"You used to smell when you'd try to hold me. Didn't stop them from passing me over to you. Your hands were always freezing."

"You...how.."

"Himitsu-chan has proven to have remarkable memory." Hiruzen says softly and it hits Kakashi hard. All this time his sensei's baby girl, the one he would have come to see as a sister, would have remembered him. By scent. He meets her eyes and there's no warmth in them, perhaps if he had visited, spoken to her. This is why the Hokage didn't want him to go alone. He knew.

He can't find words and Himitsu doesn't offer any. It is the little boy then, who saw Minato and Kushina as the family he needed and knew them in a way no one else does who sees..that there is something to Himitsu that is _not_ like her parents. Since the concept otherwise is so absurd though he buries the idea. Perhaps it is the recent loss of Itachi and Shisui and knowing that never again is she going to be able to just drop in and visit them that makes Himitsu unbend slightly. They are not forever out of reach, but things are utterly changed and she lives in Konoha. Without them, she just has Danzo and The Hokage, and Ongaku-sensei, Ryo...and Naruto and Sasuke. Of them all it is only Ongaku-sensei and Ryo she would go to. A man and his dog.

The years have dulled her memories enough that a silver haired canine can be forgiven.

"You owe us stories."

"I.." Kakashi closes his eyes hearing what she is really saying. She wants to know of her parents. Things he is forbidden to say.

"I kind of remember her smell." Himitsu expands and the information makes Hiruzen and Kakashi feel faint. It's a rare gentleness to her voice but she's tired and they are in her den and Kakashi was there and her parents trusted him clearly. The Hokage has helped them all along immensely and really in the end she _is human now._ Sometimes the cat can rest. "I tried to put it together enough to let Naruto know but I do not know if I recalled it correctly, and I cannot remember our fathers. Just a little about their coloring and voices. Anything more than that would be.."

"I'd rather not...let Naruto know." Because he looks so much like Minato but with Kushina's smile. Instead their daughter looks at him, her eyes and face a blend of their features as much as her hair and her serious demeanor like neither of them. For kushina was fire and Minato was the sun but none of that reaches Himitsu, she's more like the smoke and embers of the campfire. Acrid, ashes perhaps in warmth but distant and cooled. He can see her eyes withdrawing and so he finishes quickly before he loses this last brightness that has come to his life. "But I'll tell you and you can pass it on."

Hiruzen had told him before they came that to Himitsu, Naruto is everything. He sees it then when she truly smiles. "Aa."

()()()()()()()

Naruto passes his test but he's so fidgety and it seems unlike him. Himitsu is patient, but after weeks of his being on his team and hearing everything superficial Himitsu has had enough. She is the big sister and will not let her little brother dance around something. Not when it is upsetting him.

What he tells her makes Himitsu stare with an open mouth and blink before practically sitting on him so he can't escape as if they were children once more and assuring him she still loves him.

They spend the next few days and nights being unusually clingy but by the end Naruto is convinced that nothing will drive Himitsu away.


	6. Chapter 6

AN: You know the whole reason I have been breaking these into chapters is because even when I go to read it over it was taking forever..but figuring out where to break it up is hard too! Anyways, opinions? For future crazy ideas do you like them broken up or would prefer my waiting until I could post it as an insanely massive one shot?

()()()()()

There's only so long until Naruto's patience is going to snap and Himitsu waits, at ease, because she knows it will happen and that is when she's going to talk to the one person who made that _damn law_ that no one is to know or talk about the fox. It has Himitsu _furious_ and depending on what he says she's not entirely sure she will allow either of them to stay in Konoha.

When he's on a mission the next time heading off to Wave she practically stalks the Hokage and demands the whole story. She get's it. He makes her promise to say nothing, saying he wishes to inform Naruto himself when he is Chunin. In exchange she asks for anything their mother or previous containers wrote that can help Naruto. When she mentions she will read it and then pass it along, not Naruto who is even worse with reading than Himitsu, the Hokage promises to get them for her. It is their heritage after all.

She didn't expect the wealth of information.

She _really_ didn't expect the _seals._

Himitsu spent the majority of that day curled up under her blankets barraged by horrid memories with the scroll thrown across the room. It takes her months to manage to get back to it. Months where she's gone on two hunts that take a long time, Naruto has gone on a C-rank, and Himitsu has finally taken to reading to distract herself from the fact her brother is gone. It helps that the seals are very different than _Runes_ but they still make her skin crawl. The worst part is the more she learns of their Uzumaki heritage, the more Himitsu realizes that this time around she and Naruto are innately gifted with seals. As much as they struggle with writing the forms of seals make sense in a whole other sort of language.

She dreads sleep for it brings dreams of a time before.

()()()()()()

"-i..why do we have to?" Eyr, her littlest sister is sulking, looking up at her as if she was a child and not sixteen. Black hair cropped short because it's easier to keep clean is fluffed out around her ears, that even now show tufts of fur and the inner hairs as if impossible to entirely keep a human skin. After all the generations though this is just what they all look like in various degrees. Her nails are dark and claw tipped, razor sharp as she taps at the table in front of them.

"Because they need us to." their blonde sister sighs as her own hand goes to play with her hair before falling away. When brought here the locks were shorn off and the braids and adornments discarded like so much refuse instead of the memories and honors they were. It was the first stage of disheartening the group. When it comes to books and learning it is Chyrr who is the genius. She's twenty, makes little Eyr seem childish in comparison with her green eyes glowing in the dim light. The names waft too and fro in her memories and she smiles, managing one for both her younger sisters.

"Know what you hunt, and what hunts you." When she doesn't know what to say, she reminds her little sisters of their people's stories. Their wisdom. Because otherwise as things stand it may all be forgotten.

"It's wrong." Eyr says as she looks down at the dark sharp forms on paper that they are being forced to memorize. To use. to...charge. Symbols that are so innocent seeming and the scent of ink has become one that sends shivers up their spines. These are not things they knew in the earlier days.

"Yes." It seems the entire room agreed, the mixture of races and creatures all there in different rooms, all collared, all for the same reason. No doubt if they had heard through the cracks around the doors they'd whispered along with it too. They dared to agree what Eyr is the first to give voice. It makes sense though, for out of their kind it is tiny Eyr who seems innately good at these twisted shapes. Something in her resonates and their captors are too excited about this. Her eyes meet Chyrr's. Then one by one green and blue and amber eyes all around the room. The elder children here. For every species in this building has been culled from the wild; they are caught between too old and too young, but they are the last of the elder ones. The ones who remember a time before collars and blood and suffering. The ones who aren't so young as to need another to care for them. They lost all of those under the changing age because they 'weren't of use'.

"I don't want to be here anymore.." whispers out another child One who is still over seven and the smallest there. One who has never known a time before they were being tracked down and caught always trying to hide. In the end though not a single of the wilder races had made it.

The felines in them demand to be out of the cage. They were gnawing at the bars so to speak. So too must any of the other wild ones. They are kept segregated most the time but there are moments.

"Try to get in touch with the other types." She finds herself saying but no one challenges her. Out of all of them, sadly, of all their kind...

She's now the oldest.

Twenty two is too young to be the elder.

But she is all they have.

()()()()()()()()

Himitsu wakes up and it takes hours for her to stop dry heaving and trembling. She frantically checks her skin over, and over, ensuring that only scars and marks from various fights and mishaps adorn her skin. She stares into the mirror and thankfully it is the sharp clear reflection of Himitsu that greets her. It is not the form she only had seen in the water and ponds that held the full names of her sisters deep within her breast, only using the chuffing sounding ones when addressing each other as they always did.

Eyr and Chyrr's sister is not in the mirror. The eyes are these days a little more green and reflecting like a cats, the hair is more red than golden rod. But the face is softer and the shape to the cheek bones, forehead, slant of her eyes and lips..the shape of her jaw. That her ears are perfectly rounded. None of that was her's before.

She falls apart curled up against the wall of the bathroom. When she finally comes aware stiff and cold as she is, she forces her way back to the scrolls.

She didn't let the Runes beat her in the end. Himitsu is damned if she'll let seals her parents left her to help her, not harm and control, defeat her now.

()()()()()()()()

Ironically the various calming exercises Mito and Kushina speak of in the notes, to help communicate with the fox are precisely what Himitsu needed. They are meant to deal with something else, something inhuman and altered specifically for Uzumaki chakra.

Himitsu practices fervently but never takes the final step that would have her in her mindscape. Just in case, she does not wish to do so in the village.

()()()()()()

When Naruto comes home she is waiting at the gate and all of Team Seven seems to be weary. She gives them all a soft 'Welcome back.' Because Sasuke needs it, Naruto needs it, and Kakashi may be every sort of problem out there but it is thanks to him that she's been able to tell her brother about their parents.

It's because of Kakashi they know their mother loved Ramen, adored cooking. Was sensitive about her hair color and had ungodly amounts of strength and chakra. It is more than they knew before.

It is Naruto though to whom she goes up and cups his cheeks in her hands, just leaning down to rest her forehead against his with a soft head butt. He returns it and goes limp in her hands.

"I'm back, Nee-chan."

The nightmares he went through and the struggles come out later when they are curled up on the couch being lazy. Himitsu comforts him, walks him through the issues.

"Haku he..said we ninja are just tools.."

"We are." Himitsu agrees. "The choice is with each battle what sort of tool you shall be."

"It's not right."

Himitsu pauses but she's relieved to hear it. Naruto has always been so single minded on his goal she was starting to worry he'd not keep anything of himself, for himself. "no, it isn't"

"I want to be Hokage to make sure no one has to go through that again." He has said this so many times but it is different now.

"I think..that's a beautiful goal." And she means it.

"You think I can?" Naruto looks up at her and his blue eyes are so deep..not like the amber ones of Eyr but the hopeful and curious expression is familiar and she smiles, eyes softening at his earnest entreaty.

"I have no doubts." Because when someone like Naruto, like Eyr, like Itachi and Shisui..even herself, when they decide to do things for others as a whole amazing things happen.

For the first time as she watches Naruto's body relax, knowing what he carries inside after she sees him starting to _question..._ Himitsu decides at some point if he does become Hokage she will tell him everything.

()()()()()()

The chunin exams unfortunately are going to take place when she has a mission. Himitsu eyes the scroll, rolling it in her hands and then looks up at the blank faced 'partner' she's recently aquired. He goes by the name Tai and is quite forgettable. He scents of ink and secrets she knows are branded upon his tongue and she has met him before. He had even been one of the ones long ago telling her Danzo wished to meet her before she yielded. When not hunting or with Ongaku-sensei, Danzo has pulled strings so that this is now her 'partner'.

They've met and walked together a few times in the village but as a Root member Tai is rather hopeless. His brown hair and eyes settle over a rounded face that makes him seem younger than he is so it isn't so unbelievable that one looking about seventeen would be friends with one barely turning fourteen. Indeed, Itachi and Shisui had been older. She'd never really known with Taro.

"I'd like to make it back before the exams have gone through." She tells Tai. He inclines his head. Tai is brilliant at tactics and planning, her direct counter. Generally he just follows her and is another hand in battle. Danzo of course, has assured himself they can fight together by pitching them in many a battle in Root's headquarters. It is precisely because he is very good and yet a silent fighter, as opposed to a flashy one tossing explosions and loud attacks everywhere, that Himitsu has never complained about pairing with him.

"We should leave now." By now Tai means it and so with a swift clone sent off to inform Naruto that she'll be back soon..though as she is uncertain if he will actually be nominated for the exams she hopes to be there if he is. Not that she tells him that.

They set off at a dead run.

()()()()()()()

Traditionally most work in three or four man cells. Smaller groups do happen but Tai and Himitsu are going to meet up with an ANBU team that lost a member and cannot abandon their mission. Technically Tai is going to replace them, but it is Himitsu as a hunter nin who is the extra. Because while there she can ensure that the body of their lost comrade is recovered or disposed of while they focus on the mission. It's not a traditional use of a hunter nin by any means but Hiruzen doesn't hesitate to send her on body retrieval and disposal missions these days with all her work as Huntress.

He's actually stated it's a very useful role to have.

()()()()()()

Himitsu is highly amused to meet the team as none of them remove their masks. One of them however, has her attention.

He smells like the forest.

()()()()()()()

"We will not be able to assist you." The captain informs her, it is serious and detached. Fitting for ANBU captain but Himitsu is Huntress and right now the memories are sliding beneath her thoughts and she's glad he can't see her smile behind the mask.

"I'd be disappointed if you could even _find me._ " She practically purrs and it's amusing to see how they all shift ever so slightly. It's not the professional tone she should be taking but Himitsu is falling into the hunt and doesn't care. "Would you have something with their scent?"

It surprises them but it shouldn't, she knows word had been mentioned in the scroll Tai had handed over but a rag with their missing companion's blood on it is passed over and she holds it up towards her mask disabling her seals with a tiniest flicker of chakra as she inhales.

Blood and iron, below that is various fluids that the body secrets. Lipids and liquids but it is the subtle that she seeks..

Clover, wood, a tang of her chakra that dances the scent over her tongue and nostrils that are assuredly developing the proper scenting organs from what her brain tells her body and chakra should be there. It's not that old at all. They must have sent word immediately upon her -because it is clearly a woman despite that she has tried using unscented soaps- capture. Clever of them.

Himitsu tucks the scrap into a pouch that has seals just for this, to keep scents. Her belt is littered in them, each made just for her. A present from 'Shiro' in lieu of payment for a job. The truth was it was also from Itachi in thanks for what she did, and does for Sasuke but that couldn't be said in a note.

She has another belt just above it where she keeps her many storage scrolls. Eyes follow her hands as unlike them Himitsu is not wearing a cloak, she despises them for they make sounds and can be cuaght on things. No, Himitsu wears snug gear that bares some skin but only where it will otherwise rustle. Her hair is tightly woven and bound and under a hood connected to her sleeveless top and the mask fits into the space for it perfectly. As a necessity, it is loose around her neck because she cannot stand anything tight there.

"Meeting point?" Her voice is not as distorted as she leaves the seals inactive in her mask to hide scents and knows they are startled it is so soft sounding. She doesn't care. She's physically only approaching fourteen but talks and moves like an older woman when Huntress.

Discreetly, she gets another lung full of the Captain's scent. He does smell like a forest, almost as if he contains it all inside of him and Himitsu enjoys that. Because it is in the trees she is most content.

He gives her the coordinates and it is all she can do to wait for a dismissal before slipping away. It does amuse her to hear the slight surprise as she vanishes but Huntress doesn't need chakra to track and kill, the barest amount to help her move is all and so she can suppress her chakra as Ongaku-sensei taught her until she seems to not exist. An exceptionally subtle henge to blur her form into mottled hues that help her vanish in the cover is the other part of it. The hardest part of that for using the miniscule trickle of chakra is you must hold a henged image in your thoughts flawlessly while maintaining it so it is not as common a technique in the higher ranks. Himitsu though once spent years with applied camouflage and patterns and can easily pull them to hover in her thoughts while doing other things.

She _moves._

Huntress finds the job easy. It takes her time only because she circles, many a time to ensure she knows all exits and entrances. She explores and observes in ways taught by Danzo and the Uchiha, by Ongaku and Ryo. Mostly though the methods she uses are just as applicable here as when she had learned them from her father. When she had taught them to Chyrr and Eyr buying them time until capture.

They could have lasted a little longer if Eyr hadn't been so young and inexperienced but when she was caught the older sisters went along. You didn't abandon family. It is what made catching the Wild Ones so easy.

You only had to catch one to catch a drove.

But here? Here they did not know that and the only one who held her truest loyalty is safely nestled in Konoha with his team. Her friends in the Uchiha are long set on their path and while hers may cross she cannot run beside them.

And it's kind of amazing how if you are willing to not use active chakra here, as opposed to passive for henges and moving aides, traps and warnings are not going to catch you.

The ninja are a special kind of arrogant. It works for her. Easily Huntress finds a convenient location to pick a lock, smash a window, and send henged clones darting about looking like young ragamuffins trying to find something worth stealing. On nearby buildings. Once there's been a nin checking out the ruckus and going back in because who cares about a tiny gang of dirty brats, he doesn't notice her slip in on the ceiling as he closes the door behind him.

She moves ever so slowly.

But the scent of death was on the rag and she knows if the nin she's coming for isn't dead yet there's nothing to be done for them so she can take her time. Huntress figures they'd rather all their captors end up dead and maybe one brought back to Konoha for questioning anyways.

She moves slowly. Chakra not needed to stick to the ceiling after a bit as she easily can use locations up above to maneuver in the shadows. A low level henge uses almost no chakra, that is why academy children can do that even if they cannot even manifest the chakra to stick a leaf to their hands. You use more chakra breathing out. So since she is barely even using a henge save to hide her skin and hair colors even further, obscuring the mask and clothing sheen and making it where she just is a mottled form of dark grays and browns, adjusting for the lighting in her hiding areas.

It's almost too easy.

There's only ten ninja. Most are already injured, they are trying to identify the Konoha nin there and so Huntress takes a good long look, lets her humanity slip a little.

She doesn't expect the tingle along her spine and the way her mouth aches but she allows it as her hearing seems to sharpen until she can tell they are arguing which of the members of the bingo book it is. The girl is alive still, but barely. Fortunately it looks like they've settled with just beating her to see if she will talk but are waiting for something else to take effect. Likely some form of hallucinogen. The information would be faulty but it would give them a starting point.

Himitsu has some morals, and a heart. Huntress has worked with Danzo. She sees the tell tale signs that there is nothing that can save this woman. It's a pity she can't allow her the comfort of knowing her torturers are going to die but a mercy kill is all she can offer.

She loosens the chains mentally.

Huntress drops down and away, thin wires cutting deep and coated in an unguent with nasty effects, her own hands coated in a thin sheen of protective chakra as she lashes out with the tanto every Anbu has but it is a distraction from the flurry of senbons she has set free. Her instincts take over and as they couldn't risk powerful jutsu's without hitting each other she uses their momentary surprise to take them out.

The first attack alone has many fallen. For all they seem to know better ninja are really quite horrid when surprised.

Huntress doesn't count. She's too busy moving and striking in ways that confuse them. She drops to her hands and kicks, blades in her shoes snapping out and impaling, but these ones are like a bee stinger and slip out of the sole on impact doing more damage if the person goes to pull it out..which they always do.

Two die from that alone, instinct forcing them to yank them out of their throats and ripping them wide in the process. There's only a few left and they are mad. Huntress dodges jutsu easily, she was friends with Shisui they haven't a chance of startling her in speed and Huntress will have no witnesses here so she needn't worry. Her strikes are edged in chakra, forming claws and cutting deep. Disemboweling her opponents or tearing their throats out easily she pays no mind to the mass of blood. It is only when done that she moves to the dying Konohan.

"You are relieved of your mission."

The woman's eyes meet hers and as dazed as she is she knows a hunter nin mask, as altered as Huntress's is. "Take me..home."

Huntress nods. "Who shall I notify?" It is entirely out of protocol but the sheen to those eyes are worth the effort she will be expending.

"..Yuh...ii... Kure..nai. Friend." Huntress kneels beside her, memorizing the name and more importantly that she wants her friend to know _how_ she died. She can give her this.

"I can use a blow, or put you in a genjutsu first." Huntress's voice has gone soft, low and gentle. The hunt is over, the kills made but a comrade lay dying within her reach and she is now the woman's only concern. The lessons are older than her body and she will obey them.

"Drugged." Huntress pauses. It's hard for the woman to speak but..sentiment is not something a ninja can afford.

She doesn't care. There's something to this woman and she'll help her let go in a good way. "How long?" Until it takes full effect, until she doesn't know anything.

"Seven?"

Huntress nods. "Let me seal their bodies and rig an explosion to go off in a bit.." She stands not answering the unvoiced question of the broken form she has been talking to. She meant to leave one of the ninja alive but she can be far too good at what she does. Nonetheless her mind is calm and once her work is done in mere minutes she cradles the woman with chakra aiding her and leaves. It doesn't take even a few breaths to be back in the trees.

"I thought you'd want to go, free."

The woman manages to grab hold of her shoulder where she's being cradled bridal style and squeezes with all the strength of a newborn kitten. The woman's eyes look up, through the leaves, locked on the stars. Burning them in her memory. Making it her last sight.

Huntress has done this act so many times. The words slip out next but for the dying warrior in her arms she translates them.

"When next we walk between the stars, where shadows and secrets lay. Tell all who come after me, what deeds I was known by." She gets no farther before the body breathes out, but it was a relaxed breath. At peace. The lines of the hunters cry had seemed especially fitting just then.

It's not the first friend she's lost here. That would be Taro. It's not the first she's seen die that was a comrade. But this woman, only perhaps about to hit thirty years of age..so close to the age Himitsu was when she died.

She feels the bridge between then and now more keenly than before and seals the cooling corpse in a scroll before looking up. She affords herself this one moment.

"Tell them what deeds I was known by..for it is only those whom we forget, who never find a way to return."

Himitsu swallows and feels the tears pool behind her mask but knows they won't fall.

The explosion goes off as she's long gone from her perch and something in her mind has shifted.

It seems she's become more attached to being one of Konoha's than she had realized if a comrade she never met affected her so.

()()()()()()

She meets at the rendezvous point and the blood on her body but no real injuries is proof enough, as are the clear scrolls along her belt. The one thing she kept out though, she does not know if this is tradition here but it was something..something important when she had another name. She hands the captain the woman's head band. The way they take turns holding it, hands spasming. She thinks it's appreciated.

Tai approaches her as they camp that night, Himitsu having needed to wait a day for them to get to the location and speaks softly as they are nearly back to Konoha but the ANBU group is low on chakra.

"Any complications?" Tai asks as he sits by her, the conversation is stilted but he tries. Oddly, Himitsu sometimes thinks he really does want to free himself from Root more. She does notice there is a wariness between the captain and Tai so they clearly know each other.

"Mmm..." Himitsu starts, she can feel the attention of the others though they likely think they are being subtle. Tai has worked with her, he waits. The others are ANBU and know to be patient.

"It's never easy to lose a comrade, even if you did not know them before." She says and with that they know she had been alive, and likely dealing with guilt. It is not something Himitsu knows how to comfort them on.

"How did she go?" Comes the whisper from the form next to the captain. It is not breaking rules to ask and she does not mind. So she tells them. Tells them of the ambush and the drug, that she took her out to die free amongst the trees and looking at the stars. That she said final words for her.

They ask for them. Himitsu only hesitates a moment because they are, after all, comrades. Something she didn't realize had become so important to her. When she repeats the verses there's a serenity to them before Tai speaks.

"I've never heard those before."

"You wouldn't of." She says softly and it is one of the only secrets Himitsu has gifted. They take it as she invented the words and she lets them.

At some point each of the three ANBU approach her as they run back the next day and give their thanks.

Himitsu is _off_ when they make their report and while she is not supposed to remove her mask Hiruzen tells them to and as it is the Hokage she does not hesitate.

"So young!" Someone says startled and there is the awkward shifting. The unspoken 'Like Itachi' hangs through the room. Himitsu has been dealing with that for a while and gives a raised eyebrow. "I'm only a chunin."

The startled expressions make Hiruzen laugh and he explains that yes, she is, and a new Hunter Nin but making a name for herself. There's quite a bit of commentary about the fact that Huntress is so young and Himitsu's expression is quite amused they have heard of her. She lets it go though once the actual mission brief is done, handing over the scroll of the woman and her killers.

"Did we make it back in time?" She asks softly and the nosy group is all eavesdropping but Hiruzen doesn't mind, not when those eyes which are more green than blue these days are on him and he smiles.

"The Second exam is currently on day two, and yes, Naruto is in it."

For just a moment the Hokage can see that indeed Himitsu is Naruto's sister..Kushina and Minato's daughter..as her face lights up in pride and she smiles as if she's forgotten anything unpleasant.

It's the first time he can remember her doing that.


	7. Chapter 7

AN: Little over halfway of what I have written now..

()()()()()

()()()()()()()

The first time she runs across Captain again he's with Kakashi and they are discussing something while waiting for Kakashi's team to complete the forest of death. While they could be waiting inside the tower, instead they have gone to pick up food. It is pure chance they are going to the same Akimichi restaurant that Himitsu is with a long string of game birds draped over her shoulder.

"Kakashi-san." She inclines her head politely and Kakashi returns her greeting before being amused as her eyes roam over Yamato and she smiles. "Nice to see you again, Sempai."

"What's with the birds, Himi-chan?" Kakashi asks as Yamato doesn't seem to know how to respond, he remembers when he inspected Naruto's home she mentioned hunting to help support them.

"Akimichi request. I don't mind them, since they will pluck and clean them."

"Oh?"

"We are just getting something to eat, want to join us?" Kakashi asks and he can feel Yamato's surprise but it is a rare treat to see Himitsu smile though she teases that she won't pay for his share.

The two are comfortable talking and Himitsu doesn't even attempt to catch Kakashi removing his mask though he just uses a low genjutsu which Yamato knows he only does when comfortable. So it is not Himitsu but the other patrons he is hiding from. The girl he sees now is still serious and yet she seems at ease, something he soon realizes is because Kakashi is giving hints about how Naruto is doing.

"It was pretty funny seeing Sasuke and Sakura's faces when Naruto came back with plenty of fish and was smoking some for later." Kakashi tells her and Himitsu...

She smiles and there is something to how she does it that makes her look her age but it never changes how old her eyes are.

"So how did you recognize Yamato here?" Kakashi asks as he knows what his former teammate was up to and that she shouldn't say anything, for all he knows the girl before him is Huntress and wouldn't that just make her parents proud of her? He doesn't know how well she keeps secrets.

For the first time, Kakashi hears Himitsu _laugh._ It's the one Naruto spoke of one day to Sakura that when Himitsu is truly and completely amused that it feels like chakra bubbles along his skin. He'd thought it the exaggerated tales of a brother who has a very talented sister for all that her rank to Naruto is only chunnin. Right then though there is a sudden lightness, a softness, a pure indulgence that is so ...kittenish..it makes it entirely apparent that generally Himitsu is being far too old. Her very chakra humms happily and seems to invite them to share in it. It is brief before she closes back off and Kakashi has the peculiar sensation she unconsciously is seeking something when she does that. As if she's reaching out...and not finding something.

"Scent, Kakashi-san."

Yamato reacts comically and Kakashi tilts his head. He knows Himitsu has a good nose but everyone smells things different. "How so?"

Himitsu hums softly and her eyes lock onto Yamato, unblinking. It's a slow regard and her mouth seems to smile but Kakashi recognizes it as the parting of her lips how she enhances the scent. "Like the loam and woods of the very forest itself right after a rain. It's a very _pleasant_ smell."

She doesn't know of his gift and yet there is a lilt to how she speaks it that makes Kakashi amused because that is not how a young girl should have her voice pitched and it makes Yamato look cornered.

Very entertaining to see a man in his twenties be flustered by a young teen.

()()()()()()()

The time Naruto has until he fights is a month. He has a teacher and tells her plenty before she actually meets the pervert.

Unfortunately Jiraiya meets Himitsu alone first and Himitsu is a tall young woman with a face and demeanor that makes her seem far older. So when Jiraiya makes a lewd comment, and it is certainly not one that interests Himitsu, it is to be met with a sneer and her turning to walk away.

He makes the mistake of grabbing her shoulder.

Himitsu's reactions are not those of a young woman. They are those of a much older woman who has handled unwanted advances many times, from those she had no interest in or had simply tired of. From a place where claws and teeth were used to enforce ones words. She cannot help her instinct and so Jiraiya is not only sent flying, which he manages to recover from rather impressively, but has unconsciously chakra enhanced her hands and so deep gouges are in his shoulders. Not as deep as it could be but it was like she had claws instead of hands and there is blood. Jiraiya is starting to yell at her, livid when Naruto shows up and goes straight over to Himitsu babbling happily.

"Nee-chan you met the pervy sage I see!"

Jiraiya has quite the freakout realizing this is Minato's daughter. Kushina's daughter. The underaged girl and he just hit on her.

When they settle things later he's actually very proud of her and her reactions and praising her. The information that he's their godfather is a bit of a shock but is taken well.

Jiraiya is really interested when he spies a sealing scroll instruction manual sprawled in the room. He doesn't know why Himitsu is so nervous about them for all that she's happy to get advice, and wishes Naruto had more of an interest. But really, that Himitsu is so wary just shows she knows it is a very dangerous art and too many never think of it that way.

It turns out she'll be gone for his actual fight. Naruto wants to be upset, he does, but Himitsu headbutts him softly and works a braid into his short hair to hold a bead for him to wear and smiles.

"I have no doubt you will win."

Naruto clings to her but answers as only he can. "Believe it!"

()()()()()()()

Himitsu is going on a very long mission with Ongaku-sensei and two of his fellow Jounin that were there when she'd crashed his apartment. It will take them to a number of villages while the exams are going on so they can gather intel. Himitsu after a point is to branch off in each and work on her roster of names and targets while Ongaku and his group can work the bars and locations she cannot.

It gives her a chance to run into Shiro.

()()()()()()

Shisui is overjoyed when she breaks into his home and is waiting for him. Because it is Himitsu who is there and not Huntress, and for the first time Himitsu smiles at him and returns his hug tightly.

He doesn't know why she's not resisting acting friendly but since he's so alone..it's good to have her there.

()()()()()()

Himitsu spends a few days with Shisui. He's got friends in this side village way out between the areas of Fire country but they are civilian only sort. He's adjusted to being with one eye and just keeps dreaming of if somehow he and Itachi could ever return to Konoha. He manages to sneak off and train secretly so that his skills do not fade.

Perhaps it is how safe she feels staying with Shisui, and being out of Konoha, but Himitsu sleeps better than she can recall.

She wakes up though to Shisui's "Hey when did you get a tattoo?"

()()()()()()()

Himitsu can't even think to reply as she throws herself in to see a mirror, terrified. It is not the dark shapes she feared though.

On her shoulder's are subtle dark brown and black variegated spots. Just a few.

She sinks to the ground holding onto them.

Luckily Shisui thinks she just thought that they weren't really something she'd gone through with and likes to tease her she shouldn't be drinking at her age. Many do, so it is believable.

The words won't stay in though.

Himitsu grabs Shisui's hand as he's about to tease her and he immediately goes silent. All the small ways she's shown friendship outwardly here in his tiny home are astounding and Shisui just wishes he'd been in the village to see whatever changes were going on.

Green eyes reflecting the meager candlelight meet his and Himitsu smiles. He's one of her first friends and always looking out for her, she can give something back.

"They're like my eyes Shisui."

He's brilliant after all, even if it is Itachi who is the acknowledged one. "Will I ever know?"

Himitsu looks up, Shisui's let his sharingan activate often that night as if to sear her visit into his memories to take out when he needs them. She smiles faintly.

"Not everything, but a little at a time. I'm adjusting to trusting friends still."

He smiles at her. "Thanks for finally letting us in." It's not said bitter or with judgment though but an honest quiet relief. Because all three had figured out Himitsu was just not good at telling they were friends even if they acted like them. It was as if she just didn't know how to express it. Shisui runs his fingers over the markings and hums.

"they suit you. Is that why you got the mask?"

She nods and Shisui chuckles, just wondering. After all if Naruto holds the Kyuubi..

Why would being the child of the last Kyuubi holder and the Yellow Flash give Himitsu feline eyes and spots?

()()()()()()()

The spots on her shoulders give her so much comfort. She doesn't hide them. She sees no reason to even if she dons Huntress's mask it only lends a nice atmosphere to her disguise and they are easy to henge away if she feels like it. The rosettes are gorgeous.

They give Himitsu courage and so the next time she separates from her team to catch down a name in the bingo book she lingers after. Alone. Secured in a cave with seals drawn around she sits and pulls to memory what Mito and Kushina wrote about in their scrolls.

It doesn't take long and then she's in her mindscape.

It's the first time she's been here as Uzumaki Himitsu and it is _curious_ how different it is from the one she had gotten familiar with as a little girl the first time around. None of the methods she knew from then had worked this time though and so having a solution is wonderful. Himitsu looks about, curious as she turns.

The ground beneath her is different, the scent, the plants and colors are all ones from her previous life. But here the trees are mostly those she knows from Konoha, and the stars have mixed constellations above.

Still there's a reason and she goes to find the lake. Because there has always been a lake. It is made of silver and black an inversion of the night sky. Once it was only silver, but her soul has ever been tainted by the runes and the tiny pin pricks of shadows are not something that will ever brighten away. Himitsu smiles and crouches down, lapping at the silver water that is liquid and fire, the air and grit all at once. She hears the same sound ever so slightly off from the drops falling off her own face and looks up.

Across the stream crouches her reflection.

She's beautiful. Different from her now. The limbs are a little more compacted, the shoulders broader and less curves to her. There's no bust for it seems only humans have permanently swollen teats unlike most of nature. Spots cascade over her skin save for a few areas, hips, forearms and legs where they shift into stripes. Her hair is golden rod and the same hue takes precedence over tan in a few areas. The eyes are vibrant green and reflective, hair as it was before it was shorn. Long and matted with tangles and braids, bone beads and wooden ones, even a few stones here and there and a feather or two. A very large bite mark mess on both sides of her neck and the front by her collar bone from many seasons of laying with another. She was never the sort to let one at her back. Her jaw is different, and when she parts her mouth ever so faintly the sharp teeth can be seen. Her hands and feet have dark claws on them, her ears pointed and tufted and her demeanor wild.

"Rhyshrra." Himitsu whispers out and the form shifts until it is a great cat covered in spot and a few stripes with fur a deep golden rod who stares at her. Waiting.

Himitsu breathes out...

And awakens to four legs.

()()()()()()()()

It takes time once again to adjust to her second skin. It is not as easy, not anymore, to transition. When she was Rhy it was breathing in and out, no prickling sensation. One was a much hers as the others. Now there's a crackle of chakra to it and it is disorienting but thankfully not painful. Just takes a lot longer and she cannot be caught halfway, she's tried just in case.

Because she misses her claws in battle. They do not happen, Himitsu will have to content herself with forming them just out of chakra.

Her instincts and skills are all very off, but it has been fourteen years and so she simply relearns to hunt and climb. She _can_ use small amounts of chakra in that form which is interesting and finds out it can allow her to slightly change her vocal cords for a very crude attempt at speech. It is a sort of temporary jutsu though and not a comfortable one.

()()()()()()()

Himitsu returns with a number of bounties to collect, stories of Ongaku and his friends when hungover, and a very at ease demeanor.

Learning the third Hokage is dead and all that happened destroys that.

It seems she'd gotten fond of the old man and can add his name to those she never let know _meant something_ to her. Himitsu takes no shame in collapsing into tears at the funeral and holding Naruto as he does the same.


	8. Chapter 8

AN: To answer, again much of the story Himitsu is not going to be present for as a Hunter nin so at points it will seem to go a LOT faster. She's just not there for it and I try to keep at least focused around her.

()()()()()()

Naruto is leaving for a few years on a mission to train. Jiraiya is taking him and Himitsu looks at the old man and for the first time she feels so _young_.

"Please. Send me word of where you may go..just so I can.."

"It's not safe to do that." Jiraiya points out and though it's confidential and Danzo would hate it, Jiraiya was Hiruzen's student and while Naruto knew he loved the old man, Himitsu didn't. She's not very good at letting herself be aware of those she loves anymore. But Naruto is out saying good bye to his teammate's and friends and so Himitsu acts.

"We probably use a lot of the same informants." She whispers and slides over to him a symbol. Her symbol.

"How do you know Huntress?" Jiraiya asks because they _do_ use many of the same people. Information to track is information to sell after all. He looks up though and is not prepared for the steely expression to the green eyes and the serious demeanor. It's eerie and he almost thinks of Orochimaru with that ruthless expression.

"I am Huntress." Before he can argue it she pulls out the mask and is holding it. It only takes a moment, because he can see the seals from here and you don't fake craftsmanship like _that._

"I'll give you a list of places I like to stop." Jiraiya agrees as he regards her so seriously. "But why?"

"It's what I am meant to do. What I am." She means it and then looks off to the side. "But I live for knowing my little brother is safe...and happy when he can be."

Of all the things she could have said that one has Jiraiya smile, his eyes soft. Because that a young girl is becoming the most feared hunter nin in the sense of sheer capability is terrifying for what she could become. But that she wants to know their likely moves because she will clearly miss her little brother?

"Don't forget that."

Himitsu laughs then, and it's shaky and strained but she looks up at him. "I am horrible at knowing when I care about people, Jiraiya but _Naruto_ I have loved since I first held his hand."

"Hiruzen.." He chokes up but continues. "Mentioned your memory.."

She nods, eyes closed. "Most the time to be honest, it feels like a curse." And it is one of the most honest things she's ever told him. He lets it go.

()()()())()()()()

Danzo is only too happy to give her a very extended full year mission with many targets. If it takes her longer it is fine.

Himitsu is put away like a favorite story and Huntress emerges entirely. She comes back out if she runs across Shiro/Shisui or Itachi, sometimes finding Jiraiya and Naruto. For the most part though Huntress is becoming a name everyone knows and she is contracted with a number of villages under third parties to hunt their own down.

The woman who once was known as Rhy stretches in her new skin. She doesn't mind. It's a freedom of its own and the hunt has always been the most desired thing to her. She spends so long alone she re-masters her second skin. Learns a number of new techniques and attacks. At fifteen she ends up pushing down an eager older teen in the grass and enjoys herself in other ways. She actually likes the boy but it doesn't last more than a week because she has to move on. She leaves him with a kiss and knowing he has the courage to pursue a girl in a different town he's always liked but thought he wasn't worth the attention. It's nice to know.

Telling Shisui when she visits him again is highly entertaining.

"What?! You ..but.." he splutters but Shisui even as Shiro is _such_ a gossip. "What was he like?"

Himitsu blinks and tilts her head. "Black hair, black eyes..quiet but smiled a lot. A little shy and awkward but friendly. It was just temporary because he wanted to focus on his career." She tells him other things. Slowly Shisui gives her a funny look.

"He sounds like Taro."

Himitsu pauses and then even sighs, smiling faintly as she looks at Shisui. "I know. I think it's part of what I liked about him."

"He adored you, you know." Shisui confesses and watches Himitsu tilt her head. His heart clenches at the idea of what could have been, as it often does. "The first time you told us someone confessed to you Taro was so upset. Relieved though too because it meant you hadn't picked up on all his signals and he wasn't ready to admit to it." Himitsu is a freakingly amazing hunter nin, she's a good friend but her oblivious nature can sometimes border on insanity and so Shisui doesn't hesitate, his eyes watching her. Sharingan active as he always tries to have it be because he never knows with the world as it is which time she visits will be the last.

"Taro told Itachi and I, a few times, he wanted to marry you some day."

Himitsu closes her eyes and runs a hand through her hair. "...Maybe if things had been different." She finally agrees and somehow it is so bittersweet but it makes Shisui blink back tears.

Because he can entirely imagine that world. One where at fifteen and yet she looks so much older, the red haired beauty would be training with him or Itachi, Itachi free from likely training to run the ANBU division at this point. Shisui having taken over the Military police..or maybe they'd be swapped. Because of course Itachi would be learning how to run the clan. Maybe Itachi would have finally gotten serious with his girlfriend or with another. Shisui would hopefully have someone serious too..

And Taro who had always wanted to do a sort of program for retired ANBU to mentor the ones coming in so it wasn't so much a trial by fire..

Taro visiting and smiling and doing his awkward half wave before putting an arm around Himitsu when she took a break, who would just look up at him curious before settling into the hold. At that age, Taro would probably have found a way to give her an Uchiha pendant or at least a promissory ring to make certain no one else tried to steal her away.

Shisui clears his throat letting the dream fade. "You'd have been a wonderful Uchiha." He chokes out. To lighten the mood he wiggles his eyebrows, joking. "You know there's still Itachi and I.."

Himitsu laughs softly and then tilts her head, smiling though. "Your scents are too much in my mind as my family."

It hits him like a physical blow.

Because it's no secret how Himitsu is with family. She says it as rarely as an Uchiha confesses undying love. Maybe once, and meaning it entirely.

"I think I'm happier with that.." He manages to get out and Himitsu thinks for a moment, so still and quiet. Shisui doesn't dare move and barely breathes because she does this when something important is about to happen.

"Come into the woods. I want to show you something."

()()()()()()()

The sight of the immense wild cat where Himitsu had been standing in the clearing is surreal. But the eyes have not changed and Shisui holds out his hand in wonder.

"There's a store.." And he tells her all about Neko Baba. He doesn't understand, he doesn't dare ask when Himitsu is _finally_ trusting him and telling him things. What he does know is this shouldn't be possible and he doesn't want to push her. But if anyone can help it should be the Uchiha's favorite cats and Neko Baba knows how to find them.

Himitsu headbutts him lightly before she leaves.

()()()()()()

She returns after almost two years, but shy of it. She almost never managed to find Naruto and it's fine. Because whenever she did they had time to catch up quickly and exchange hugs before parting. What is interesting is there's a new Hokage and she is forced to be evaluated by the peculiar woman.

"So you're the infamous hunter nin." Tsunade says glaring at the young woman who has her mask off. There's no response, but then Tsunade smirks. "I like that you've made a name for yourself. Not enough women get recognition unless it's as someone's wife or girlfriend, no matter how skilled they are."

Himitsu, despite rationale saying she shouldn't...

Really likes Tsunade. She's loud and hurts her ears, she stinks of sake and burns her nose. Her Genjutsu itches at her eyes. But she's a good woman, a strong one and the sort of leader that they don't get enough of in life. Himitsu thinks she could be loyal to a woman like this.

Reporting to Danzo goes well too. Obviously most of her scrolls had to be turned into the Hokage but her reports to send to Intelligence have been duplicated and a set goes to Danzo with all the interesting people and bloodlines she's heard of or seen and where.

She learns Tai has perished in a mission and doesn't know how to take it. She liked Tai well enough and they worked together but she never really...knew him. She requests leave for a time before getting a new partner.

It's only like she needs them when she's not hunting after all.

()()()()()()

She visits Ongaku and Ryo who are glad to see her. She drops in on some of the others and makes her rounds. She spends hours just sitting quietly with Kurenai.

Ever since she dropped by one night and told Kurenai what she needed to know, she's just felt the urge to visit.

Himitsu takes joy in sneaking into Kakashi's apartment and trapping it every time he goes on a mission. He finds and disables them of course but it's a welcome back he can appreciate. If there's a note on his fridge telling him a restaurant that has a meal voucher for him it only makes it better.

()()()()()()()

"Come on! You can have some!" Tsunade laughs and Himitsu shakes her head amused. She's seventeen, and the women have been gathered by the Hokage to spend time together. They are in their usual attire and while Himitsu drinks sometimes in situations she's never been fond of it.

"I don't like the burn." She confesses and so Anko snickers but Kurenai smiles.

"Put it in tea."

It does make it bearable and so she sips at her tea and slowly Himitsu relaxes. Muscle by muscle and savors the camaraderie among the women. The talks turn wild after a bit with Tsume and Anko telling stories of the favorite places they've acted 'this and that' out and there is a lot of laughter.

"What about you girly?" Anko drawls looking at Himitsu, not expecting anything of her but Himitsu smirks and the girls sense _gossip._

"I prefer to be the one doing the riding." She says idly in a purred drawl that saturates satisfaction and there is sudden howling commotion of 'details!' that has the entire bar listening in because what has them acting like that?

Kakashi and some of his companion's that forced him out for a drink are startled as a voice he remembers teasing Yamato..one that Yamato remembers judging from his bewildered look..drawls in the loud room.

"Which one?"

"NO! YOU!?" And Anko suddenly is treated to the sight of Himitsu baring her teeth and laughing in a way that is wild and delighted and free.

Himitsu locks eyes with Anko, recognizes the loneliness and the wildness in the other woman and knows here is one to whom she can relate. She spreads her hands and bares her teeth in a grin, because even if everyone else here judges her in the morning Himitsu does not care. She is alive she will damn well act like it.

"I have blood coursing in my veins, why not me? I like a measure of control, I prefer to look down and watch them fall apart as 'the little death' takes hold. I like watching their muscles move and strain under me as I control the give and take between us. But the best?" Himitsu has no idea the entire bar is listening, most blushing bright red because you do not talk of these things without hiding it in hints and subtle manners rather then painting such imagery; but Himitsu does not care. She may only have lain with the boy that reminded her of Taro a few years back, only for a week, but Rhy? Rhy's neck was marked numerous times and she left far more on those she chose to favor. Rhy's experiences leave Himitsu confident and knowing what she does and does not like and shame is not something she feels when she and her partner are willing and enjoy what they did. "The best is when the man I am with has his back against the grass or the moss beneath the trees with his hands digging into my hips and we're clad only in moonlight."

There's a number of chokes and the women hooting and cheering her on as Himitsu gives another laugh and clinks her drink with Anko.

"...that.." Genma chokes out beside him and there's a splutter from Gai who cannot even make a speech. Kakashi is dazed.

But it _is_ Kakashi who sums it up. "That description is better than any in Icha-Icha.."

()()()()()()()

Himitsu has a lot of offers to go out after that night at the bar but turns them all down.

"Maa..rather popular aren't you Himi-chan? Maybe you shouldn't have told them all that." Because Kakashi knows she scented him and they're out to eat again as they do regularly. Kakashi always knows when she's back from a hunt and the restaurant she's supplying will feed her and let him sneak in a meal as well.

"My entertainment is not up for control." Himitsu says with a shrug and Kakashi smiles because it's refreshing to see someone not embarrassed.

"They're just wanting to try out what you suggested."

"They don't smell right." She answers and he leans back. It's one he knows. Kakashi himself doesn't have relationships that often, even casual ones, because of that exact reasoning.

"It's hard when your nose is sensitive." He agrees. Some people only have to think looks or personality or intelligence. Scent introduces a whole slew of connections that can be wrong.

"How's Yamato?" She asks and Kakashi gives her a look, he doesn't believe for a moment it's an idle question.

"You liked his scent didn't you?" And he's an evil, evil man but when Himitsu's smirk forms and her eyes seem to flicker like a cat's..there's a roll to her neck and shoulder's and it's so entirely sensual he knows he guessed right. "You're a bit young for him."

"Am I?" It's asked teasingly and Kakashi snickers.

"Try to leave him _alive._ " Kakashi crinkles his eye but really...they're both ninja and adults in the eyes of the world. "He has no idea what to do with someone." And it is true. Tenzo never did figure any of these relationships out, even his own with Kakashi is abit on the awkward side but Kakashi has never been the best example.

"I think he'd find much of it is instinct." Himitsu says as she resumes her meal and Kakashi is far too entertained because he's talking to his Sensei's daughter, a dangerous Hunter Nin famous already even if they do not know who is behind her mask..about seducing his kouhei who was a Root operative and an ANBU captain with a bloodline limit unseen since the first. He doesn't even feel a need to read his book, he may just get to watch a plot unfold. Without the good parts but there are some limits even he has.

"It's all his scent then?" Kakashi asks but for just a moment he is serious because he is fond of Tenzo and does not wish to see him hurt. He knows all too well what those prodigies who are damaged can be like and he's not certain how (or if) Himitsu has side stepped that. And Kakashi is entirely aware he is the worst person to be talking feelings but he tries.

"For now, that is all I know of him." Himitsu smiles at him though and there's a fondness there that she's never shown and it makes Kakashi relax. "Scent tells a lot though."

"Aa." Because to them, yes it does.

()()()()()()()()

Naruto returns before Himitsu has decided to track down the living forest as she thinks of Yamato and there's a lot of joy filled reunions. Stories they did not have time for when they swiftly met up are finally shared and Himitsu watches her brother sleep that night.

He's sixteen, the training mission went longer than he thought. By almost two years. Himitsu sighs and closes her eyes. She's no fool. Soon Naruto will start looking for a mate and have children because they do so young here. She's made bonds, enough to tie her to Konoha when that happens. But enough that she stays all the time?

Unlikely.

She is a wild animal inside after all.


	9. Chapter 9

()()()()()()

As it turns out, Yamato finds her. Deep within the forest of death and yet she's reclining on a tree branch, looking entirely at peace for all she's in tiger country. One hand dangles down relaxed.

"Are you alright?" He asks as he lands nearby. There are the large beasts prowling below but Himitsu opens one bright eye and smiles at him.

"Hello Yamato-sempai.." And it's an obvious purr. It startles him and he remembers her talks, her mentioning years before of his scent and finds no way to respond.

"You should be careful with them.." He manages instead and Himitsu smirks at him before easily dropping down. There's a moment he's ready to rush and release the vegetation because yes she is a hunter nin but this...

Is impossible. Yet the large cats huff at her before yawning and putting their heads back down and Himitsu looks back at him over her shoulder, unconcerned that they are so near and could bite her in two. "Shall we go for a walk..Yamato-sempai?" Himitsu asks and there is a clear invitation to her voice.

The memory of such an awkward conversation and having the infamous orange book shoved at him by Kakashi makes Yamato stare. He'd tried to give him warning but he'd thought it was just another prank.

Surely that's all..

"I'd rather not become cat food." He answers instead and Himitsu chuckles with a very amused smile before she's back up there beside him.

"Prefer to keep to the trees?" And while she _meant_ to walk along he makes a strange sound and Himitsu realizes he's remembering her description and laughs. "Oh Yamato-sempai..I don't bite..unless it's consensual."

Somehow they actually do manage to go exploring the forest and each in their own way are entirely at ease. He's used to the wonder when he uses his wood release but it's rare someone asks questions.

"Is it hard? Controlling something so external?"

"Yes. No one ever thinks of that though.." He sighs "They're used to it with other elements but this takes two elements and the proper fusing and constant adjustment so the living wood can grow.." He ends up getting into the details because Himitsu is genuinely curious and keeps asking questions. Oh her interest hasn't faded, even he can tell by the way her eyes slip over him often and the teasing tone she sometimes takes but she's having fun seeing what he can do and doesn't mind him going on about some of the trees they find.

After a few hours like that he feels comfortable asking. "Why a hunter nin?"

Himitsu glances over at him and humms as she gives the same answer she always does. "Because I have always been a huntress."

Yamato pauses, a hand on the tree and she stops to turn back, head tilted. But it is a memory of the first time he saw her, masked as she was. The way she moved and spoke, the way she returned and her actions. The many stories he has heard which have if anything only been severely edited down..

"I believe that."

She gives him the most content smile before parting for the night.

()()()()()()

It's not the last time they meet up to just talk. While there's been nothing to deserve Kakashi's teasing he still gives it, and while Yamato takes it very badly and provides entertainment Himitsu never even blinks at it. In time Yamato finds he enjoys the slightly skewed ways that Himitsu regards things and some of her stories are lively and entertaining, proving she is definitely Naruto's sister.

()()()()()()()

"What's your favorite technique as a hunter nin?" Yamato asks one day as they're patching up one of the training grounds. Or rather, he is with his ability and Himitsu decided to keep him company. He's grown accustomed to it and Kakashi in one of his rare non teasing modes tried to explain that for those with very sensitive noses it's a blessing to find someone whose scent they enjoy being around.

"Henge."

"But that's..level..E..." He is confused as he looks over at the sunset haired woman, where it seems there's a good deal more gold in her tresses these days. He does wonder when she started covering her shoulders as he knew she used to always wear items without sleeves but fashion and ninja is sometimes confusing.

"Precisely. Passive chakra, most never notice it. I'm _good_ at hiding and moving silently Yamato." She looks over at him and he just nods because Himitsu unlike her brother, does not brag. "I just use it to go from hidden to pretty close to invisible. Patience is most of what you need in my skill set."

"May I see? As you use it?" He asks and he knows even if it is a tiny graduate level technique asking someone to see what they use is quite personal. She chuckles but nods. "Finish this area and I'll blend."

He does so. He doesn't tell her that since these trees were made with his chakra they will help him sense within them, doubtless why Hashirama made so much of the outer Konoha barriers be trees because even now Yamato can slightly connect to them. But they step inside and even with his eyes right on Himitsu..

It's like she's not there. She moves so slowly, silently, through the dappling light and the henge flows over her like water reflecting dappled patterns. His breath catches because he can feel it and so see where she should be. But this?

"I think that's a way no one ever thought to use it..."

"You can see me." And it's dark and dangerous and curious and she's right in front of him and Yamato nods.

"In these trees."

She hums but her hand is still on his forearm as she lets the henge go and gives him a fey smile. "I still would have gotten to you."

Yamato inclines his head because she would. He couldn't perfectly track and he didn't see her right in front of him until it would have been too late. It's..only normal for a nin of his caliber to find that breathtaking. Not that he does a thing about it.

He does stare at her and look to be a lot more in thought though, Kakashi notices and is curious as to when the change was and why he missed it.

()()()()()()()

She manages to convince Danzo to let her go hunt down Itachi. It takes her and Shisui once they decode what stupid message he'd hinted at to Shisui on his last visit to find him and tie up the very sick prodigy and Himitsu actually joins Shisui on ranting about stupid idiots and their plans.

Itachi hasn't gotten to see Himitsu as often, mostly they pass information and hellos through Shisui so seeing her so animated, and undeniably lethal is a shock to him. Luckily when Himitsu snarls at them she's going hunting and they better be there when she is back, Shisui fills him in a lot more.

She returns with a positively massive boar already gutted and handled. Wordlessly the boys take over cooking it and when Kisame shows as he inevitably does, Shisui is under a mask -Himitsu still carries the spare- and she is too.

It's...almost priceless..that it turns out the giant fish is a fan of her work. He joins them for dinner and Kisame is sent into peals of laughter that Huntress is such a pretty young woman. Because it just can't be helped, the next time he makes a joke about her that is exceptionally crude..Himitsu gets an expression that has Shisui's eyes wide and he discreetly activates his sharingan because there is no way he's missing this. Out of habit, old habit, seeing Shisui do so makes Itachi activate his..

"c'mon I'm just saying if ya let the stuffy Uchiha tap ya lemme have a lil pussy.."

"You like..pussy hmmm?" Himitsu purrs the tone and just as Kisame grins showing all his teeth..

Well he'd set Samehada aside to eat so there's no warning when a massive spotted cat is suddenly pinning him down and snarling in his face.

Kisame screams.

()()()(()())()()

The boys have to put Kisame under an impressive genjutsu that takes both of them and he's knocked out but the memories have them laughing every time they revisit it so they can't complain.

"How did.." Itachi starts and Himitsu chuckles.

"Promise me you'll use a clone for the stupid plan and not you first."

"I'm not going to live long Himitsu.."

"You'll live a lot longer if you don't do something so stupid!"

"Sasuke needs.."

"He'll manage! He's not some idiotic little boy! He can make his own stupid decisions but if he gets through it and there's no Itachi there, no older brother, it will destroy him far worse!" She snarls it at him and there's a coiling of danger that has never been directed at Itachi. But there's something else to her speech and both Shisui and Itachi catch it.

"How would you know?"

Himitsu growls and runs a hand through the hair, sending beads clanking. "Promise me."

"...I promise."

Himitsu looks up at them and sighs. "Before I was Uzumaki Himitsu, my name was Rhy.."

The entire story comes out softly. Oh not all of it but enough. She tells them of a world unlike this one where it is creatures and races and strange beings who dwell in it. Where there is the Web not Chakra and instead some races have skins they can trade and they call themselves Wild ones. She tells them of others who find ways to bend the laws of nature, who can do things like and unlike the jutsu's here. She speaks then softly of a group that wanted to create a new way to alter the fabric of nature and made something else.

She calls them Runes.

She shakes her head, Himitsu refusing to speak more on them save they were an abomination and that if you want to create power when there shouldn't be any it takes immense sacrifice. The Uchiha exchange a look. The Mangekyou comes to mind. Himitsu tells them of how one by one her kind were being killed off, used to help create this other power but it needed more. It had been a flawed system. She speaks then of escape and spending years barely surviving with other races and creatures and the breakdown of old systems because they were all they had and all of them had a common goal. She shudders a few times but mentions her sisters. At some point Itachi and Shisui have curled around her as her voice starts to falter but she keeps talking.

"Eyr..she had always been a perfect match. It was a fluke, just a chance but once they had enough to charge it they were going to sacrifice one more to make it work. They always wanted her for it." Himitsu looks up into the red eyes with whirling patterns and swallows. "I took her place. It activated with me instead and in the chaos they were all able to escape. I wasn't compatible, at all so I destroyed it." Himitsu doesn't dare close her eyes so she can't remember the pain of the slow death the burning inside and out and the stench of it, the cries of her kin and friends as they broke one of the laws and abandoned her. She'd demanded it, and she had been the eldest of them all. They had to honor that.

"Your people.." Itachi starts, trying to absorb what she just said and pretending she is not trembling in their hold so violently. "How many of these symbols were made off all of those deaths?"

"One."

()()()()()()()

Blessedly, they still treat her as Himitsu. They know now she was someone else but she's still _her_ and it's rather like they used to be the pride of a clan but it is now gone and yet they are still those same boys. They never bring it up again or ask any questions.

For some reason, it allows Rhy to finally rest inside her.

Himitsu is ready to finally accept it and move on. She's now been human a little over half as long as she'd been Rhy, and while she won't ever forget, she knows her thoughts and actions have slowly been becoming more human. She's never going to stop being wild, something that doubtless if her original body was seen here they would consider monstrous, but that's okay.

And if the words that Shisui had whispered to her in the middle of the night when he saw her stir were a large part of that?

"You'd still be an amazing Uchiha..."

Himitsu could finally let others in.

()()()()()()()()

She returns with Itachi's head band stolen in her pouch to 'prove his death', Sasuke does have his eyes but it was easy enough for her to wait until he had them transplanted and then sneak in to steal those eyes, to give Sasuke's to Itachi and not hard for the two geniuses to find an old retired Medic nin willing to do the job. As for the other illness, there's ways to extend his life and make it more comfortable but never entirely fix it.

They can handle that. A hair cut, a few prosthetic s and pretending to be mute and Shiro comes back from vacation with his brother Kenji and together can handle a lot more information and passing of notes where it is needed.

Himitsu returns to give the headband and the announcement of Sasuke killing Itachi.

()()()()()()

There's not much of a lull and so much that she needs to catch up on. It leaves Himitsu exhausted and she spends many days just reading and making reports.

Because while they have rumors of battle coming, they need allies and their last link to so much was Jiraiya..and Himitsu is grieving at the loss of the man..she is sent right back out. Only a visit long enough to see Naruto and take the scrolls and books about the Uzumaki with her. She may as well study on her down time.

()()()()()()

She's recalled by Danzo.

()()()()()()()

Missions come and go as situations with the Akatsuki and Naruto escalate but almost nothing prepares those who knew her for when Danzo is taking control as Hokage and his Root agents are there..

and there's a particular mask they know among them. It shouldn't be so personal, yet many people take it that way.

"What are you DOING?!" Kakashi snarls at her when he breaks into her apartment that night, he's not the only one but Yamato and Ongaku and Kurenai stay silent. More would be there if they thought they could without drawing too much attention.

"Do you have a plan?" she says instead and Kakashi looks tempted to hit her. She sighs and looks from one to the other, wary before she does the only thing she can. It's a risk..but she takes it. She opens her mouth and sticks out her tongue.

It is unmarked.

"Wh.." Yamato..no, Tenzo. She had been told the difference was Yamato is who he has become to be Naruto's sensei that one time she was gone but that before he was Tenzo, before that Kinoue. Kakashi calls him Tenzo, she'd been allowed that too before this. "You aren't..marked?" He sounds cold and detached and it's the sound of one who doesn't wish to hope.

"I refused. So instead he threatened Naruto's life if I ever say a word." She says and no one dares to suggest she tell them anything with that hanging over it. Not with how loyal Himitsu is to her brother.

"What were you doing with him then?" Kakashi growls and he's struggling to control himself but she just sighs and sits down. Seals spiral out as she slaps her hand on one activating an entire privacy network in her home and making them speechless. Because an array like that? Has thousands of symbols, countless hours...

"Oh do close your mouths. I am an Uzumaki." Himitsu reminds them and they just look at her, waiting. "Danzo trained me to be a hunter nin. He heads the department."

"Shit."

()()()()()()

There's a heavy silence and then one of them curses. "We need information..even if it is old.." It's Ongaku and Himitsu closes her eyes.

"This once your visit can be explained away." She says softly and they all understand.

"I would understand the most of it. I was there longest." Yamato says softly and then he's there, ignoring the audience and just locking eyes with Himitsu's bright ones. "We have a lot to catch up on.." It's awkward and subtle but the hint is there and so is a question. Because even with the privacy seals someone by now is probably watching through the windows and Himitsu smiles, standing and tucking her face into his chest and breathes in.

Under the scent of his clothing and sweat is the forest and Himitsu relaxes.

It's answer enough.

Even Kakashi doesn't say anything and gestures to a curious Kurenai he'll explain later. Ongaku just has his eyebrows up but nods. "Well. That will help things."

()()()()()()

Of course, they go slow. Mostly it is picking up where they left off. Long walks in the woods and the forest of death, nights spent talking and holding hands. It's a fast pace for Yamato who has no experience, it is agonizingly slow and so much meandering to Himitsu. But their hands can pass subtle morse coded messages and talk that way, and because Yamato understands speaking around his curse some of the topics only appear random but he's giving her terms he can pass on.

And then one night when he's over for dinner and her hair is loose and she's dressed casual he dares to run a thumb over the curve of her shoulder, traces the rosette patterns with his fingers. "When did you get these.." there's a curiosity and a tone to his voice that does interesting things to Himitsu.

"You like markings, Yamato?" She asks deflecting in but isn't prepared for the look in his dark eyes.

"Tenzo."

"Is there a difference?"

"Huntress..to Himitsu." He admits and she tilts her head but understands. Both are him but Tenzo is the one around whom his better days are wrapped in before he was entirely swallowed by command.

"Then whom would be Kinoue?" She asks and there's something about how she says it that has him locking their gaze and his hand drifting down her arm and back again.

"That..was all I knew for the longest time. It's my first name. I don't..it's.." He sighs. "It shouldn't be but it feels private."

Himitsu feels her hand moving to wrap around his free one, tangling their fingers as she looks up at him. His scent is around her and while she'd like to _finally_ kiss him, to mingle their breath and join in every physical fashion there is a curious form of this intimacy he offers instead that seems so much more..potent.

She knows she's not visible right now from the window and so she breathes in his scent and whispers softly, after all her privacy seals are always active but she's with someone she's known to be seeing so it's understandable..and Naruto is not in the village...

"Rhy."

Black eyes sharpen and bore into her but he doesn't demand. She just smiles at him. "Some day I will tell you..but keep that secret."

"What level?"

She doesn't hesitate. "Above Kage."

Questions whirl in his eyes but then that is what Himitsu is, has always been. A puzzle, a curiosity. Warmth and bold and yet she hesitated before telling him that and after what he confessed. He does not know what a strange word like 'Rhy" means but it is evidently important.

He nods. She smiles then and the conversation shifts back to plants and the slow passing of coded information. He never stops touching her markings, fascinated.

()()()()()()()()

Danzo calls her in. He demands to know what her relationship is and the parallel to times long gone make Himitsu grin at him, unconsciously diffusing the situation. After all he had been the one trying to explain boys and advances to her once upon a tea session with Root operatives all over observing.

"Honestly the man is skittish and hard to get into bed."

It startles Danzo into an amused huff of laughter and he asks her to see if he ever slips any information up. She easily goes on about his hours of talking plants and rolls her eyes and with every word -for every single one is true- Danzo's comfort in his superiority is back.

"Do let me know if you ever manage to get him into your bed. He has a rare bloodline after all..it would be wonderful for it to not die out." Danzo has supplements given to female agents that can make them far more fertile and Himitsu tilts her head. She doesn't want them, but there is no reason she can't play along.

"Give me the usual ration. It may be a long time but it's easier than trying to find a source later."

Danzo is positively beaming and she knows security is going to be removed from her house because he won't want to risk losing such an incredible chance at the wood release with the Uzumaki bloodline.

Himitsu isn't even hiding her smirk as she looks forward to telling Yamato how it is she got him to back off. He really never blushes and it's a goal of hers.

()()()()()()()


	10. Chapter 10

AN: All right this is the last of what I already had written. I'll try to finish it soon. It's really hard to write endings to Naruto stories with how insane the plot and battles get.

()()()()()()

AN: There is honestly very little Himitsu can do with the following events so they will seem to go very rapidly. No Itachi for Sasuke to confront, and he and Shisui are very far and not part of all of this. It will probably annoy them later.

()()()()()()()

The fourth shinobi war happens and Naruto is in the midst of it. Himitsu approaches her brother as the planning is happening and tugs him aside. He's so serious, gotten so strong.

"I need to meet with people Nee-chan!" He says but then Himitsu sighs and smiles.

"You need to know the pieces you have to use, before you plan..Naruto.."

"Just tell the boy with the other Kage's. It'll be easier." Kakashi says and Himitsu turns, lifting a brow. But still, this he says. Demands. The tone of a commanding officer, and for all the issues they've had from the start Kakashi is indeed someone that Himitsu trusts now. She just hopes he doesn't go the way of the other he reminded her of.

Instead with the watching eyes of many there, in a moment before they have to move out and plan Himitsu pulls out her mask and kneels before the leaders of their hope. "Huntress reporting...I am ready."

there are startled sounds and gasps and yet Himitsu looks up and her eyes are _gleaming_ and Naruto is confused. "What...you're..ANBU?"

"Huntress. The Huntress of Konoha is an Uzumaki.." states Mei as she walks forward with a laugh, delighted. "Wonderful! Well then I've heard tales of you Hunter Nin..and they all agreed one thing, you are best left _entirely_ to your own devices."

It is advice none argue with and Naruto's eyes are wide, but proud. "Nee-chan?"

Himitsu stands and as always, despite the mask, leans down to lightly headbutt him in affection. "Do not look for me on the battlefield Outouto..you will not see me if I am not meant to be seen."

"You come back alive! I..I have to tell you things that happened and I met mother and.." He hisses and his hands are firm on her arms. He feels her skin as she laughs.

"Believe it.." She whispers and he backs up sputtering a laugh as she vanishes..not in leaves or smoke but it seems like the shadows themselves pull her under the ground. It's..

"Eerie."

()()()()()()()()

Himitsu steps aside mentally. Huntress and Rhy have blended nowadays but Rhy is still a little more ruthless, a little more wild..and though she does not wish to draw on it, to risk it, Rhy has a trump card.

Unlike the two awaiting forces, she does not care to think too hard on all that is at stake. That is not her way. What matters is those she has let into her heart are on one side and she's seen those who think they can remake the world in a better image before.

She's died stopping that once.

()()()()()()()

They aren't ready for the attack when there's disruption in the Zetsu army. "Huntress is at work.." Kakashi muses and Naruto looks at them, surprised. "You're telling me stuff later!"

"Not really a surprise. She is _your_ sister."

()()()()()()()()

They taste foul judging from the scent that comes in her mask but Huntress dares not block it. Not when she uses that sense so much. She's using every trick this time because the plants can sink into the ground and follow so she is flickering, chakra claws and weaponry everywhere but the force is immense so it is only swift attacks and retreats.

She knows she can't keep it up long and so she uses a seal..one she carefully scratched into her fore arm. She couldn't tolerate the idea of a real tattoo but a scar? That she can do. It sends her back to where the placement seal is. She hides and rests at the back of the Shinobi alliance's forces, just beyond it and closes her eyes.

Throughout the next few days that is what she does. Moves in, slaughters and throws explosions and weapons, jutsu to every last bit working from the back in massive destruction as is _never_ her way. The reasoning is simple, she is so deep in her instincts she would just as likely lash out at allies. The moment she's almost too low on chakra she activates her scar seal and recovers. She loses track of time.

()()()()()()

She barely notices when the opponents change, when monsters and things emerge. Huntress only knows the fight.

At some point she passes out for too long, a good distance away because she needs _rest._ She wakes up to a meteor crater where the battle once was.

Because she's sunken so deeply into her instincts, Huntress doesn't really react. It's a coping method, she's little more than a monster herself right now and all she does is kill.

At some point she hears Naruto, but she's resting. Hurt, but healing under a medic nin she finally needed to approach. She sealed her mask at some point, needing nothing to block her vision with the mayhem.

"I like your markings.." A too young med nin whispers to her and Himitsu is briefly aware..she manages a crooked smile before passing out. Though she does wonder why the girl is touching her face.

()()()(()()()()()

The next monster..it's insane. It gets worse and slowly Huntress is failing. She's pushing to hard and too soon but she keeps picking off any she can that start to get near them. When there's a loud gasp she turns to look up to see what everyone else does..and is caught in the greatest illusion.

()()()()()()()()()()

Eyr and Chyrr are there, alive. Somehow they found her here and are telling her stories of after her death. They are entirely bemused at the place, Konoha is strange to them when run down villages are more what they knew. Buildings of wood and stone but not electricity.

"We gathered in time. Slowly healed. Most of us made the journey across the waters in search of the islands that we all first came from." Chyrr explains and yes, she always did love to learn. A bookworm in a world without books.

"So it existed?" Himitsu asks, her spots are resplendent upon her skin and her hair is a softer reddened gold but otherwise she is still small and human where her sisters are much taller and differently shaped. Yet they are at ease out at a restaurant outdoors..trying the barbecue and enjoying it as they spear them with their claws. No one really stares, or they come over to speak politely but really in a world of summons and strange features they do blend well enough.

For all it seems most cannot tell her sisters are indeed female.

"It did! Strangest place.." Eyr says and it's strange to see white in her hair and tinging the spots..for they are all spotted but it is purely against the skin as it would be in their other skin. It is the skin that is colored and the fur grows out with it so no matter which form they have their markings. Well..most.

Shiny old scar like marks decorate Eyr's brow and arms. Chyrr's as well. Himitsu though has only her spots. But it soothes her heart to see those hideous once blackened symbols have faded so..like a bad memory healing over.

"How so?" She prompts and Chyrr laughs in the wide jaw throat back way that shows how elated she is, and comfortable.

"That's right..you're the little sister now aren't you!" they cannot call her Himitsu and the words they speak are rough and clumsy but they manage even if maybe only every third word is understood by those around them.

"Sure sure.." Himitsu smiles but she does not mind at all. "tell me about it?"

"It's not floating in the sky." Eyr says with a beguiling smile and shrug of her shoulders. "Just like any island except large..very large. But there are caves and immense trees and the fish there!"

"Some of them still resided there. Two whole groups." Chyrr agrees and Himitsu feels her heart stutter in awe. "They still had three skins but unlike us they were still..sharing. If they took the land form they were the passenger, a bird was the same. One we met actually had a fish form, so strange. But they were sharing the control and only had it in their own skin so it was more a symbioses then truly their own other skin."

"I like our way better." Himitsu agrees because at least though they slip into their instincts it is always their bodies and their control.

"So no cubs yet?" Asks Eyr and her eyes are wide but her smile is sly and it makes her sisters laugh.

"Was hard enough keeping an eye on Naruto occasionally!"

"He's a good brother." Her sisters agree and it is a feeling almost unlike any other to know they see him as family, have pulled him into their lives so easily and Naruto of course basks in the attention.

"So, tell us..?" Himitsu is about to but the seats around her are suddenly filled with Itachi on one side and Shisui on the other, both unharmed and smirking at her rolling eyes.

"Manage to ditch Sasuke?"

"He's arguing with your brother and Kakashi again." Shisui nods and it makes her smile. "Taro says he'll catch up later."

"Did he ever ask out Hana?" Chyrr asks, because of course her sisters know the boys. The only ones who really know who they are and Shisui grins that funny smile. "Oh yeah, after he realized he didn't have a shot with Himitsu because of her instincts being a little too much for him.."

"We ended things kindly." Himitsu interrupts and Itachi coughs.

"You left permanent bite marks on his shoulder!"

"He wasn't complaining at the time."

"Probably wasn't." Her sisters agree and the Uchiha drop it. They just do not have the ability to think as the cats do.

"Anyways, he didn't want to risk losing a shot at her. They are set to go on a date tonight. Want to help us crash it?" It's directed at Himitsu but Eyr, the eternal kitten is happy to volunteer.

"How are things with Yamato?" Itachi speaks softly as Chyrr and Eyr bicker with Shisui, the group like cousins at this point and all the horrid senses of humor working well. Himitsu tilts her head and smiles at him. It's a gentle smile that lights up her eyes.

"Still slow." But she doesn't mind, not really because this? This is a new sort of intimacy to her where the end goal is not companionship and pleasure but to slowly build something lasting. It's achingly slow, and admittedly frustrating, but in a way it's helping her merge her instincts and she appreciates it. Especially because it is all so new to him.

"Have you told him?"

"Yes." And the memory is strange and sweet and terrifying because opening up like that to Shisui and Itachi whom she sees as family is one thing. But Tenzo is still so new to her but his scent draws her in, promises comfort and danger all in one. It is everything she loves in Konoha cloaked in the deepest of forests that radiates from his skin and his calm and patient...but still at times humorous nature is a good foil for hers.

Itachi just raises an eyebrow. But the memories are too dear to share even with him, her first friend here, even with her sisters whom she carries the full names of and they hers, something no one here has. So she just tells him one thing that will satisfy the protective streak of her friend concerning her with his former teammate. "He said I was at least not so young as he feared."

Itachi smiles.

"Auntie~" come voices and the balls of fluff and too short limbs barrel over, yowling and snarling and clawing because they aren't good at managing their talons yet but Chyrr submits to the helions. They know she is auntie as well, she scents of it in some way still thanks to her other skin but her skin is softer and thinner and cannot handle the talons so they only ever lean over to be patted on their unruly hairs.

"I still can't believe you mated that canine, Eyr." Himitsu says and her eyes dance but Eyr just grins. It had been there from the start though, Eyr had befriended outside of their kind first..when collared and coralled and soon they'd all learned Kral was not so bad. He still reeks of canine but the silver haired male makes her sister smile and it seems to amuse them that the cubs are either cat or canine skinned but not both.

Naruto is off with his team but he'll be by, Yamato and Kakashi and Taro..and so many she can't name. Himitsu chuckles because if her vocal cords were a smaller cat? She'd be purring right then.

()()()()()(()()()

She is not sure what snaps her out of it but for a moment devastation makes her falter.

It was a beautiful dream.


	11. Chapter 11

AN: So weird how if not part of Team Seven it's really not much you can write about without it being endless observation of other fights for the actual war. Wasn't too happy with the last bit but we're back now. I was always a little upset no one reacted permanently affected by the moon eye bit so Himitsu will be handling the fallout. Also unless I feel like adding in a few things, yes this is the last chapter.

()()()()(()()

After the end of the mass illusion Himitsu has trouble adjusting. Oh she hears plenty of what happened, when she was lost in the endless fights and recoveries it's rather strange to think that so much went on. It really drives in deep how much she cast off to sink into her instincts to get through the fights until she was in dire need of rest. The toll it's taken on her and so many of the other shinobi who are not chakra power houses means a great deal of them are left in recovery. It makes trying to rebuild achingly difficult. Assuming they're even in reality when there.

The sad part is she is one of _many_ suffering from what they start to call 'moon sickness.'

Her memories overlap and shift and what she imagined and what is real are too hard to tell apart. It's afflicting most of the shinobi and civilian's alike. There's whole conversations that end in awkward heartache as they ask after people gone.

That's before you factor in the long list of the dead just from the last few days.

Himitsu has it worse than many though because her two worlds blended in it and it leaves her devastated. She'd remembered just during that time, the scent of her sisters, her lost friend Kral. The feeling of hearing their voices. She'd honestly started to forget. Having it back? It was a gift that was poisoning her from the inside and she could see the worried looks from those around her. Unfortunately the only therapy that had been found to help was to talk to someone, preferably a Yamanaka.

Not a choice she could accept.

Kakashi is the one who finds her, he essentially kidnaps her and in his new apartment he sits her down and holds her shoulder's and bares his heart. He tells her of Obito, of Rin. Of the battle from his perspective. He tells her things she knows he didn't want to but the dam is opened and he hasn't talked. But he trusts her for this. The girl who in another lifetime would have been raised like his sister who understands scents and so in return?

Himitsu rests her head against his shoulders and dares to trust one more time. She tells him of Taro, of what Shisui told her though not when. And then she stops.

She leans in and breaths in Kakashi's scent and grips his arms tightly.

That world she dreamed of? If she wants it..really..then those whom she loved in it she has to open up to and it's the most terrifying thing she can imagine. Because to a Wild One family is everything and yes, Kakashi is finally family in her mind. As he should have been all along but choices made changed that. But he's going to be Hokage and free time to do this are going to be gone and she won't let one more person not know what they mean to her.

"It made me remember a time before I lived as Himitsu.."

Kakashi listens. She glosses over almost everything but he listens. She tells him she had two sisters that were younger than her and they were captured and fought free only for her to sacrifice herself in the end to save them and those who had come to look towards her even though she was too young for it. She doesn't tell him about the runes or her other skin, she tells him of Itachi and Shisui and Taro and the ideas for their future they had once had but not that they are still alive. She tells him then of her dream, and that in it Taro was alive, her sisters made it there..it sounds so small when she repeats it.

"How old were you? When you had to start being the oldest?" When you had to lead is what he's really asking but trying to not sound so much like the old shinobi he is.

"...when we first started hiding?..maybe thirteen...when we were caught? Eighteen." Four years she was their elder in captivity.

"That..and you remember..?" She nods.

"Our kind always had almost perfect memories." He draws her closer and sighs but there are no more questions. If anything he seems at ease, maybe it's that even if from her strange memory capabilities there is evidence there _may be something after death_ and so it is easier for him to cope with his multitude of losses.

They never speak of it again. Himitsu is starting to realize that is probably just how shinobi handle such...peculiar..information. They move on. Then again what can they do? Himitsu is still herself.

()()()()()()()

Telling Naruto by comparison is almost effortless. He gets a funny expression and then nods. "Yeah Kurama says it's why he kicked you out early. Said he didn't want to risk your seals passing on.."

It makes her freeze.

"w..wha..."

"he says..um, he got rid of them? Do you want me to ask?"

Himitsu goes boneless and shakes her head, curling around Naruto. "I don't need to know." Ah, maybe that is why Itachi, Shisui, and Kakashi react to her information as they do. It really doesn't change anything.

Well of course Naruto is the exception. "I think you're the perfect sister because you got it. You weren't..well..I mean.."

Himitsu smiles at Naruto as he awkwardly rants about things and reaches over to tap his nose. "I am always grateful I have you as my brother."

"Do..you miss them?" Because she had told Naruto more but left out the battles and the runes, but if anyone should know about the cat that lay beneath her skin it is her brother. It is just a pity that until now he didn't have the maturity to keep secrets because she thinks he would have been comforted by it long ago.

"...I always will." She looks down and he's almost as tall as she is now and yet she's a tall woman. "Family is everything, it's what I was taught."

"The stories you told me. They were real, huh?" And his eyes are so old now, but he's seen into the world and met gods and sages and creatures timeless and so it doesn't surprise her. If anything it seems he's comfortable not hiding behind casual smiles because while she can never understand; Himitsu too is fey and knows of something most minds cannot grasp.

"I'm glad you remember them."

Naruto nods, he's grown his hair longer, tells her he probably would have cut it short but he wanted to be able to wear the braids and he has small beads he made as they traveled. The look suits him. His scent has changed a little but it's still overwhelmingly fox and that's fine because hers is cat and the Kyuubi has made him much of whom he is. Kurama. She owes him that, for helping to rescue them.

"There was a story.." Himitsu pauses and Naruto goes to bring back a ration bar to share from the pack he set down nearby and tosses her a water bottle. They're outside of Konoha seeking some peace in the ruined country side. "Of people that we were descended from. They didn't have a second skin as my kind, but instead multiples and took turns as to which being was in control. Each with their own form. It was said they lived isolated on a great island that floated in the sky so one form was always able to ride upon the wind." She continues, telling him the myths her kind had thought of as their origin story for what else explained a whole multitude of races each with their own skin they held inside, but only that one? There was probably truth in it somewhere, but who knew. Still she can tell Naruto is enjoying the story, relating to it.

"Sounds like Kurama and me." Naruto finally says and smiles. "I think it'd be lonely not having anyone else inside."

Himitsu smiles and shrugs. "I'm still sometimes adjusting to the fact my features are so different when I look in a mirror."

"Can we..I mean.." Naruto scrubs a hand through his hair as he looks out over the ruins that was their home. "talk about this stuff again?"

"I did always wonder why no one brings it up when I've told them.." But to his credit Naruto doesn't ask who else knew he hadn't told her of the fox for a while after all. It's sort of impossible to keep secret these days though.

"Taught in the academy. I just never paid attention until I had secrets myself."

"Guess I missed out on that testing out early. Or didn't understand what I was reading."

They chuckle because yes, they are still terrible and it takes far too much effort to read and write clearly but then Himitsu looks over at Naruto and her mind slips back to the dream.

"They'd have loved you as a little brother."

She's not really surprised when he's practically tackled her to hide his tears but she meant it.

()()()()()()()

"You are certain you won't stay?" Kakashi asks, stupid hat off to the side as he looks at Himitsu, garbed as she is.

"I need to sort my mind out, and I'm feeling caged."

"...I suppose it will be a while before the buildings are done." Kakashi hints with a crinkling of his eyes amused at how Himitsu doesn't even react to the teasing about Yamato. Watching them dance around each other is interesting but right now he's so busy and worn out with his ability it isn't like they can even meet up.

"Any missives you wish me to take?" Himitsu of course, ignores the comment but Kakashi nods and passes over quite a few. They will need to rebuild their information networks as well and there are many villages who will need help so bartering will be the only way for a time.

()()()()()()()()()

It takes her a few months before she goes to visit Shiro and Kenji. Only when her mind cannot cease dwelling on her moon sickness does she yield and go to the ones she can tell her full dream.

In return they do the same because they certainly couldn't talk to the locals about imagining the Uchiha massacre, even the Kyuubi attack, as never happening. She tells them of Sasuke wandering and the two Uchiha share a look before a new plan is made.

They set out the next morning. After all the three of them have never gotten to just explore without there being a rush or on high alert. There's a plan for if they encounter Sasuke, but as much as Shisui and Itachi loved the village..they do not feel they can return. No matter what their wishes they would end up pulled back into the shadows and Itachi is finally healing enough to not cough and feel pain. They will never stop being soldiers, in their actions and thoughts but they do not wish to return to being shinobi.

Himitsu regularly makes contacts and sends out messenger hawks back to Konoha with how the local villages she passes are doing. Reports are always there on how badly the villages were affected by the Moons Eye for it had very far reaching consequences. They almost never have to fight.

"You never shift." Itachi points out one morning as they are walking, on the ground no less and at an easy pace. Just enjoying the local scenery as they've never been able to.

"I don't dare." She feels the three black eyes on her and humms. "To survive, Rhy became a man eater to better end those who came after the escapees. The problem is once they've tasted that sort of prey it becomes like your sweet tooth, all they want. In the battle I let loose my control, it was my trump card and I had to rely on it. I was far more dangerous that way but my mind was purely that of a beast that just wanted to kill. As long as I never attacked one of the other Wild Ones it was safe, Chyrr never shifted, Eyr had to fight off one of our own when they panicked and would have given us up and afterwards we sometimes had to subdue her." Himitsu glances back at them but she's calm.

"You think you attacked allies.." Shisui says with a sigh but it's not judging. With all they did how could they?

"I know the taste of man's blood." She agrees and the memory of some times when she'd be resting and the copper had been in her mouth, she hadn't even thought she'd shifted forms but apparently she had and must have used chakra to enhance her hide which was already much thicker than any cat found here, her teeth and claws. Clearly her speed. The how and why though was not changing the truth of it.

"You wont shift again?" Itachi asks and he's clearly dissapointed but understands. After all, he will never draw upon his most powerful attacks and skills again, nor will Shisui.

"No."

The instincts will remain but her second skin, as much as she misses it, will remain hidden.

()()()()()()

They come across Sasuke months later, he looks different and Shisui barely keeps from joking about how bad his fashion sense is.

Just in case, she calls out for Sasuke to stop and her companion's wait as she goes up to him.

"Himitsu." he greets her with a nod of his head but he is restless. No doubt there are many questions he's never had answered. She's about to give him a question, and his answers will hopefully come. The question is one she's carefully memorized like a pass-code for a mission, memorized but never allowing the information to really sink in. She owes her Uchiha friends that much of privacy.

Sasuke's only visible eye widens as she asks, and his sharingan activates..Itachi's sharingan how strange to see it again..as he answers. And the black mass that has been sleeping in her brain since Shisui put it there years ago roars to life and snaps out to take hold of Sasuke instead.

Himitsu steadies him as the genjutsu plays out and he's shaken but looks at her steadily. He _knows_ his family techniques and this information makes so much sense..

"What happened?" If his voice is harsh and his hands tremble, well Himitsu pretends not to notice.

"We have time to go over it, walk with us." Shisui says, still disguised as Shiro. Sasuke may not have been a prodigy, a genius but he still puts the facts together and the look on his face.

Shisui and Himitsu share an amused smile as Sasuke ignores his age to hug Itachi.

"You're going to tell him told you so aren't you?"

"Later." She agrees.

()()()()()()

Sasuke joins them, but often branches off. Sometimes Itachi goes with him. As Sasuke is himself wandering trying to atone he can fully understand why the other two wont return. He regularly looks about to say something to Himitsu but doesn't. Until one day he finally just huffs and manages, just as awkward about it as when he was little.

"Thanks."

Himitsu pretends not to hear him to spare his pride.

One morning she wakes up before the dawn and simply leaves. It's one of the nicest parts about traveling with her friends, they don't expect to chain up the cat. But it's been long enough and she wants to go home and see her little brother. The trip is going to be through uninhabited areas and the urge to let the cat run free is strong but Himitsu just sighs and runs a hand along her cheek. Where the spots had also formed framing her face.

There will be no further changes, not if she doesn't take hold of the second skin again she somehow knows that. Her eyes and spots are enough for her though; as there is no reason to risk letting out one whom cannot fight the bloodlust any longer. It is a trade she does not regret because she knows she's returning alive to her brother and any less may not have seen her make it off the battlefield.

()()()()()()

She missed Naruto being sworn in as Hokage. He is delighted to see her and there are eager stories to be told, she is amused at how he looks at Hinata and though it is a relationship she did not see coming she holds her tongue. It isn't her decision and if it makes him happy what else matters?

In time there are children who run up to her with messy hair and some have whiskers, yelling Auntie. She doesn't need to watch out for claws and fangs so she doesn't hesitate to kneel down and softly headbutt and rub their cheeks. They beg her for stories and Hinata grows on her, she understands in time that her quiet nature is the counter for Naruto and what he needs.

Kurenai's child also calls her auntie and she still visits her friend.

Yamato overhears her telling them some of her legends one day and encourages her to write them down, thinking they are her own creation. Kakashi tells her they are good ideas and so she ropes them both into it, telling the stories while they transcribe.

To Himitsu's surprise they are soon bound as books and popular. If she gets a far off expression, and almost shaking smiles whenever she hears some of the rhymes come from children as they play no one thinks anything of it.

Eventually, when the first of her neices and nephews are going to the Academy and things are still slow but comfortable between her and Yamato, he is with her in the trees one day and asks how she came up with the stories.

She tells him everything.

So in turn he shares the horrors of his childhood and what he endured. They agree at that point to not look back at their lives, to only live forward from now on but before they leave the forest she whispers something very soft in that way he has learned she will never repeat the words again.

"Rhyshrra."

Yamato smiles at her but holds out his hand, knowing he will never speak the name and what it means.

There are other battles, times when Huntress slips on her mask and goes to do the dirty work. She's called the Hokage's personal shadow which makes Naruto grin and say he told her so. There are long stretches of time when Yamato awakens to roll on his side and she's gone, but he just lets the others know she's off again and no one says a word.

Because Himitsu is still wild at heart and yet she always returns home.


End file.
